Taking your business to the worldwide web may be one of the best things you’ve done. A seemingly endless stream of potential customers in every corner of the globe, the ability to contact and keep in touch with customers and visitors at the touch of a button, complete control over every aspect of your operations and much more.
But how do you get the most out of the almost-infinite list of benefits that ecommerce and digital sales offers? How do you improve your overall sales and revenue without spending a fortune or resorting to unethical tactics? And how do you tap into that enormous pool of potential customers that might not actually know you exist yet?
Well, the keyword to focus on here is at the very end of that last question. You might not be reaching your ideal goals yet, but you will do, and we’re going to help you bring those all-important goals closer to being within your reach.
So, how do you increase ecommerce revenue?
It’s a pretty straightforward question, and a good one at that. Every business in existence wants to increase their revenue, it’s what drives growth and it’s one of the main factors when it comes to measuring success. For increasing that revenue in an ecommerce environment, you have quite a few options. Ideally, these options should be utilised in tandem with each other in order to maximise their effect. Let’s take a closer look…
Brand awareness – getting your name out there
This might be one of the more obvious (and important) strategies. It’s also the first step of the process, and one that must be done regardless of how big your business is or how long you’ve been trading. If people don’t know that your business, brand or store exists, then it’s safe to say that they probably won’t be buying from you. Even for larger organisations, it’s difficult to grow effectively without putting yourself out there.
You need to make people aware of you, your products and your services. Good brand awareness not only means that more people know about you, but it can also mean that people view you as a more trustworthy organisation (we’ll talk about trust later).
Awareness is also incredibly important for your existing customers too. Many of the same methods you use to attract new customers can also be used to maintain relevancy to and inform your existing customer base. This is an excellent way to keep your name fresh in their minds and aid your customer loyalty efforts. If you’re able to keep that relevance up and build loyalty with all of your customers, you’ll stand a better chance of maintaining a consistent revenue in your business’ future.
There are a multitude of ways to spread the word about your business. However, when it comes to increasing revenue, it’s important to consider that getting that visibility is only half of the battle. You need to make sure that the potential customers that you’re hoping to acquire (and the existing ones you’re looking to inform) are actually going to be relevant to your business and interested in purchasing from/engaging with you.
It’s all well and good putting yourself in front of thousands upon thousands of new people, but if they deem it completely irrelevant or invasive to them, it could be more harmful than helpful. Don’t worry though, what we’re about to cover from this point onwards will take that consideration into account.
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Paid advertising
Advertising has changed dramatically over time. Giant billboards and TV ads still aren’t the most accessible form of advertising for smaller businesses (despite being more so than they were 50 years ago). However, with regards to accessibility, the digital age has brought about significantly more tools and opportunities than were previously available, and they are continuously evolving as time goes by.
These days, there are a huge array of digital advertising opportunities available to businesses across the web such as social media ads (which we’ll talk about later) and Spotify ads. However, one of the most popular channels for digital advertising is Google Ads. Its popularity comes from the fact that the platform offers businesses (including yours) an extensive list of benefits:
- Google has an enormous reach – If someone has a question, or they need to find something, the chances are that they’re going to type it into Google. This is true for practically anyone who has internet access. Google, and its extensive market share, are both universal-meaning the potential reach for any ads (and organic search rankings) through Google is phenomenal.
- Diverse targeting capabilities – Without going into too much detail, Google enables you to accurately target the individuals who see their ads with an astonishing amount of precision. For example, you can target specific geographic regions (down to the city or postcode level) you can also retarget individuals who clicked your ad but didn’t convert, allowing you to tailor your advertising efforts in order to bring people back until they do convert. Google Ads also allows you to bid on more specific long-tail keywords too. The benefit to this is the cost-per-click is typically cheaper, and individuals searching for these more specific terms are more likely looking for something with a much more conversion-orientated intent.
- Non-intrusive advertising that doesn’t interrupt browsing – If you’ve ever had to deal with ads getting in the way of what you’re trying to do, you know exactly how frustrating it can be. Google Ads work a little differently to prevent this in the way that they appear only to people who are searching for specific things, meaning they are a lot more open to advertisements than they would be than if they were using social media or seeing ads on other platforms.
- Exceptional campaign control and data – Handling campaigns through Google Ads is much more intuitive and far less stressful than trying to manage a radio advertising campaign, for example. With Google’s PPC advertising, you can start and stop campaigns as and when you please, all whilst reaching the right people at a price that suits your needs. On top of that, you can also gain a great deal of insight on the performance of your advertising efforts, with extensive data being available through the interface-making Google Ads peerless when it comes to campaign analysis and improvement.
- Suitable for any budget – When most people think of advertising, they think it’s expensive. That’s the exact reason that certain platforms simply seem inaccessible to some. However, PPC and Google Ads is different. This is because you control the keywords you bid for, and many long-tail keywords that would typically be attributed to searchers with more intent are significantly cheaper than the broader options. This makes advertising for certain keywords that directly relate to you and your business (particularly if you’re in a less competitive space) much more accessible for any industry. Plus, you can set limits for daily budgets, maximum bids, and much more, putting you in complete control of your ad spend.
- The opportunity to jump above top organic results – Getting that top spot on a search engine results page is a goal you should always be working to achieve. However, advertising with Google allows you to jump ahead as the main ad section is positioned above organic search results, making it invaluable for gaining crucial above-the-fold visibility.
There are countless benefits to advertising with Google, and we could probably go on forever. It’s also important to remember that there is a diverse range of other channels for advertising your business too. Google also incorporates it other platforms (such as YouTube advertising and Google Shopping), but it’s also worth looking into Microsoft ads, Pinterest, LinkedIn advertising (amongst other social media platforms, which we’ll cover next), display ads (which includes things such as web banners), Spotify and more. The most important thing to consider when choosing your platforms is to go where your potential customers are interacting with each other, and with your industry.
Social media
Social media has become an extremely prevalent force within modern society. It’s used by millions upon millions of people every single day. Whether it’s one of the big names, such as Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, or some of the more niche platforms that are rapidly rising in popularity, the sheer number of potential customers available for businesses to connect with is truly staggering.
Most social platforms provide paid and sponsored advertising opportunities for businesses of all shapes and sizes. These typically work in a similar fashion to Google’s PPC advertising and are certainly an extremely useful tool for any business. They are well-worth looking into and investing in, but they’re not the only way that social media can be used to build and grow brand awareness. By combining your paid social media marketing with organic efforts, you can build a large community consisting of both new and existing customers, as well as fans and followers (prospects) that you can hopefully convert to customers in time.
You can think of organic social media marketing in a similar fashion to SEO (which we’ll be covering soon). Essentially, ensuring that your business remains active with consistent posting is a great start. However, for maximising your organic efforts, you should be directly engaging with your followers and customers through comments, encouraging sharing and more. This not only helps to grow your community and potential customer base that will have any future posts and content placed directly in front of them, it can also help to build brand trust. Google will even deem your business more trustworthy, enhancing the SEO of your business all around.
Influencer marketing
This ties into social media. Influencer marketing has become incredibly popular and effective in recent years, and it’s easy to see why. Many ‘influencers’ are individuals or groups who have made maintaining and interacting with a dedicated social media following their job, or are simply influential social media users who can offer what can be seen as another paid advertising channel for businesses.
Influencers exist on every single social media platform, and can be an exceptional investment for any business looking to build awareness of their brand across a large amount of people. This is because they essentially advertise products and services to their large collection of followers through their social media content. These followers tend to view the influencers they follow as extremely trustworthy, and they also invest a great deal of time engaging with their content (which is crucial).
Most influencer channels and pages are typically dedicated to certain hobbies, interests or markets. This means that their followers tend to share the same interests and passions. This in a way works in a similar fashion to paid ads (your ads target individuals searching for specific keywords, or are based on their interests and activity on social media and other sites etc.). If the products or services you offer fall into a category that a particular influencer deals with (such as alternative fashion, skincare, home décor, cars etc.), they may be an ideal fit to advertise your brand to their following.
Influencer marketing can vary dramatically in price, where those with a larger following typically being a more costly investment for your business. Some may be happy to produce a small piece of content in return for some freebies, whereas some may require a sum of money in return for their services.
When searching for the perfect influencer(s) to work alongside, it’s important to find individuals who you feel will represent your brand effectively. A poor representation or a bad choice of influencer could do more harm than good. It’s definitely worth spending time to find influencers who share the same passions as you, and are able to reflect your brand image in-line with your own brand identity. Always ensure that any influencer marketing deals are conducted officially too, as any nasty surprises on either side of the deal can be extremely hurtful and detrimental.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
As we mentioned briefly earlier, getting to the top of search results is one of the biggest ways to impact your traffic and awareness (as well as brand trust). You do that by optimising your pages and website for search engines (conveniently known as Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for short).
Now this isn’t always a straightforward ordeal. Optimising the pages of your site can take serious time, effort and dedication, and optimising once doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll keep the ranks that you achieve either. Getting those top spots isn’t going to be an easy ride, but it’s going to be extremely effective.
We won’t go into too much detail here on how you can go about getting those all-important rankings. If you want to know more about it though, we’d definitely recommend giving our Foundations of SEO blog series a read. In there, we cover ways to work on and improve the three main aspects of SEO (your keywords and content, building you site’s authority, and also improving your site’s technical health) that will get you going on the road to better rankings.
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Email marketing
Getting yourself into your customers’ email inbox has always been, and still is, one of the best ways to keep people interested and aware of your business. But how do you get them there?
Well, some of the things that we’ve spoken about already are a great start. By using paid ads, effective SEO, a quality social media presence and more, you can draw prospects to your website. People don’t necessarily have to have made a purchase from you for you to be able to legitimately acquire their details. If you’re using paid ads for example, it’s recommended to have a relevant landing page for people to arrive to (and by relevant, we mean one that is directly related to the ad you’re using). If your ad states that people could get a discount code or some form of promotion, you can use your landing page to take their email address and sign them up to a newsletter, and then the code can be sent directly to them.
Once you have a strong email list, you can use email marketing to create powerful, relevant content that can be delivered directly to the inboxes of your existing and prospective customers. It isn’t simply a matter of blasting out email after email with random copy and irrelevant content though. You need to put thought into it, just like you would with the content on your site. This is where using a dedicated email marketing and personalisation platform comes in handy. By personalising your emails specifically to your customers (including names, deals based on what they’ve viewed/purchased etc.) you’ll generally be able to gain a better open rate, and conversion rate, than a generic ‘offers’ email would. Tailored email marketing is extremely powerful, and can be used to build awareness with prospects, as well as trust and loyalty with both new and existing customers.
Customer service and referrals
There’s nothing quite like the power of a recommendation. In fact, 84% of shoppers have a strong tendency to value referrals and recommendations that they receive from others. This, then, would surely be a strong choice for gaining new customers simply from serving your existing ones effectively.
It goes without saying that providing the best possible service to your customers should be the number 1 priority for any business. The better the service that a customer receives, the more likely they are to have a positive opinion of said business and pass those thoughts on to their friends, family, and even strangers on the internet.
Whilst this may sound more like it ties in with the brand trust section (which we’ll be getting to soon), it’s also an enormous part of brand awareness. By giving people the subconscious desire to shout your name from the rooftops, you’re openly exposing yourself to potential new custom without really having to do anything other than just running your business effectively.
You can also move towards a more conscious recommendation method by setting up a referral scheme. You can utilise any of the above awareness options (such as email, paid ads, social media etc.) to create awareness of your referral scheme (which could be something such as a discount or deal for both the referee and referrer). With this bit of motivation and encouragement, referrals and recommendations could potentially bring in a large quantity of new customers.
More creative content
Content plays a huge role in every aspect of brand awareness and trust. Chances are, you’ll likely have a well-equipped blog section on your site alongside your existing content (such as original product listings, category page content, homepage content etc.). This is one powerful strategy that can aid a large variety of things, especially SEO.
However, have you ever considered some alternative forms of content and content platforms? Many businesses in recent years have turned to new ways to get their content out to their customers (both new and existing). Podcasts, videos, livestreams, infographics, tutorials, even songs!
Getting creative with your content is a powerful approach to building both awareness and trust. Depending on the content you’re creating, it can open your business up to a variety of new platforms such as YouTube, Spotify, other third-party sites and much, much more. Creating these types of content can also aid your SEO efforts – more assets (particularly original ones) on particular pages can dramatically improve how search engines view your website, whilst backlinking from other platforms and sites, particularly more authoritative ones, still remains one of the most valuable SEO strategies to date.
Strong content also improves trust, as we mentioned. If you display your expertise effectively in a way that modern customers can relate to (such as the fact that many individuals now consume video much more willingly than written content), they’re more likely to listen to you. This will build trust and loyalty, and they may even begin to spread your content between other people without too much of a push.
There are many, many ways to build awareness
If we were to go through each and every way that you could build awareness for your brand, you may be reading for quite some time. Hopefully though, you’ve got a better idea from the recommendations above on how to improve it, whilst taking an approach that suits you and your brand’s image to tailor your efforts. For now, let’s move onto trust, which is equally as important as awareness for increasing your ecommerce revenue.
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Brand trust – giving customers the peace of mind that you’re exactly who they should be shopping with
There’s nothing worse than looking at your stats/data and seeing a huge bounce rate (people who have found your site one way or another, and then left without taking further action) or an extreme number of abandoned baskets. These situations can arise for a wide variety of reasons, but it often indicates that there is a problem somewhere. These problems can affect the trust that your customers have in your brand, and once it gets out of hand then you could end up in a problematic cycle where the light at the end of the tunnel begins to drift farther and farther away.
Now, that sense of trust could be the main contributor to lower-than-desired revenue. It also might not be. Trust, as you know, is a complex emotion that can be influenced by even the most minute of details. It’s also not just attributed to the acquisition of new customers and your brand awareness efforts. Trust is a long-term requirement for any business that wants to continue or build on their success. If your customers or potential leads don’t trust you, they’re unlikely to buy from you (and potentially pass on their negative thoughts to other potential customers). This can be extremely hurtful to your revenue over time.
Trust also doesn’t just mean that you should make every effort to ensure that your site or business model doesn’t appear to be a scam. It goes much deeper than that. As a short way to think about it, trust typically refers to giving your customers and leads the confidence that you can deliver what they’re looking for, that you can deliver it with efficiency and in an effective manner, and that you can handle any of the problems or situations that may arise afterwards. Continuously. It isn’t just a one-time thing, and it’s essential when it comes to the long-term goals of your brand (such as generating customer loyalty and referrals). Your customers want to feel that they can connect with you and that, essentially, you’re not going to leave them in the lurch or provide them with a stressful experience.
Building positive brand trust is crucial from the get-go. So, how do you go about it?
Transparency
Nobody likes being lied to or deceived. Not only is it a sure-fire way to negatively affect one person’s opinion of a business, it’s also the perfect way to begin forming a bad reputation between people who may never have even heard of the business in question before.
To prevent this, ensure that every aspect of your site (and customer journey), your ads, and everything you do is truthful and transparent. If you begin promising offers and discounts to people that never surface for example, you’re going to receive questions and queries. This can instantly put people off, no matter how much of a ‘little white lie’ it may be. This also applies to things such as ensuring that no costs are hidden from customers until they reach the basket.
Transparency also sometimes means showing your customers that you’re not just a site covering up a less-than-ideal physical situation. As an online ecommerce store, you might not have much in regards to a physical presence (such as a showroom or brick-and-mortar shopfront) that many customers are able to access.
For a purely online business, a showroom or shop isn’t always necessary. However, showing your customers that the people behind the business are real can work wonders for brand trust. Consider creating a more humane persona in relevant channels to aid how your customers view you and your business. You could also have a “meet the team” or similar page, which can be a great way to build both trust and empathy with your brand.
Keep your customers well-informed, be up-front, and take pride in who you are and the team/operations behind the digital mask – people will instantly have much more respect for you.
Streamlined experiences
Clunky and non-intuitive shopping processes can be an instant red flag to customers. That means that ensuring the entire shopping process (including browsing) is as streamlined and straightforward as possible is incredibly important.
This typically involves UX (User Experience) and design work. You need to make sure that products and categories can be found quickly and easily. Each part of your site must be easily-accessible and not have things hidden away in awkward places, search functions need to work properly, baskets need to be easily accessed and simple to adjust, there should be no constant pop-up or banner intrusions getting in the way, and so on.
Continuously test your site, get other people to test your site, and refine each and every aspect until it’s right. Chances are, if you get frustrated trying to do something on there, your customers will too. The difference is that your customers may abandon their baskets and lose trust in your brand, making them much more hesitant to shop with you or even just visit your site again.
Security certificates/trust seals and protection
Security and privacy have never been more important. As the world evolves into a digital-first environment, so too are people’s concerns. That means that reassuring customers is most definitely a priority.
One way to achieve this is by publishing your privacy policy openly on your site (and making sure it’s easily accessible). You also want to make sure that you are running your site under HTTPS (secure browsing) and that you’re using a trusted ecommerce platform to run your store (such as Magento or BigCommerce).
This even goes as far as reassuring your customers that you aren’t selling counterfeit products. If your product photos are sub-par and pixelated, or your product copy is ripped directly from another retailer or the manufacturer, this can hurt trust. If possible, acquire or create high-quality imagery and assets, and implement relevant dealer credentials for any branded products you may be selling.
Accurate, easily-accessible contact information
If your customers have a question or a problem, they want to be able to reach you quickly and without any hassle. Always ensure that any contact details on your site are accurate and up-to-date, particularly if you have multiple different points of contact or relevant facilities.
This goes hand-in-hand with streamlining your site and being transparent – a difficult-to-find contact number for a returns department for example, could quickly cause a sense of distrust and the feeling that you may not be as willing to address any potential problems (even if it’s just a mistake). You don’t always have the chance to talk to customers before they view and engage with your site, so make sure that you make the best first impression possible.
Reviews, customer interaction and support
In a similar fashion to recommendations, reviews are an excellent tool that can provide a huge array of benefits for your business. Getting a wealth of positive reviews will only ever be beneficial (providing they aren’t fake reviews), so try to encourage customers to review products and shopping experiences where possible. However, don’t constantly spam them to write a review, as this could have the opposite effect.
In the case of negative reviews, these can actually work in your favour. More often than not, people will be more likely to scramble to the nearest keyboard to vent their frustration than they would be to write something positive. That means that it’s incredibly important to interact with these reviewers and try to solve their problems. Reviews are generally publicly available, and if you’re able to calm or solve a problem here, people who are looking at your reviews are going to view and analyse how you tackled it. If you manage it well, chances are that the original negative review may actually turn out to be an indirect positive for your business. It’s also worth noting that most potential customers will read the negative reviews before the positive ones.
For more information on how reviews can affect your business, take a look at our article on Google Star Ratings.
Product content with effective original copy and assets
Original copy goes a long, long way towards building a positive brand image. Not only does original writing promote a sense of expertise, it also dramatically aids SEO, as you’re providing unique content and information that is likely to be different and unavailable elsewhere. The more original information that you can provide on a product, the better, but try not to write a 5,000-word essay about a plastic storage box unless it’s absolutely necessary…
Original product content’s SEO benefits work extremely well for branded products – people are likely going to be searching for a particular product, rather than the business that sells it (in most cases, but not all). This means it’s also an opportunity to build awareness. Combine original, keyword-rich copy with other SEO strategies for your product and category pages to maximise its effect.
This also works with assets such as videos and imagery. If you’re able to provide more and more original resources that customers can view (the higher-quality the better), it’s most likely going to enhance trust. This is particularly relevant in the case of videos that incorporate your business alongside the product, as that can work well alongside the transparency point that we talked about earlier.
If you want to learn more about specifically how to write your content, take a look at our article on making every word count on our blog.
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Increasing the revenue of your ecommerce store can often feel like a constant battle, but hopefully with the above advice, you’ll feel more readily-equipped to build on the success of your brand. However, if you’re interested in taking your business to the next level, why not get in touch with us here at Agency51? We’re ecommerce and digital experts, and we can help…
