Six ways eCommerce Websites Can Boost Sales Without Spending Money

Too tight on money to market your new eCommerce website properly? Start boosting sales without spending money – find out how right here.

Six ways eCommerce Websites Can Boost Sales Without Spending Money

When an eCommerce site wants to make more sales, the typical answer is simple – do more marketing.

But marketing can be an expensive proposition for many small businesses – whether it’s the long-term cost of managed SEO services, or the short-term cost of paying for clicks through channels such as Google and Facebook.

With so many eCommerce stores popping up each day, what’s a small business on a budget to do?

First of all, it is worth noting that it is very possible to boost the sales numbers on your website without spending money.

In this post we’re going to look at six great ways that you can increase your eCommerce sales without spending any money.

1. Optimize for conversions

One of the best ways to boost sales without spending a dime is to make it more likely that the visitors on your site will buy your products. You can do this by optimizing your product pages in various ways. “We have had brilliant success since we have started prioritizing conversions,” says Moby Latif, Head of Business Strategy & Development at Childsplay “we made a simple change to highlight our Add to Bag button using orange instead of white”.

boost sales by optimizing for conversions

 

It’s a great idea to A/B test changes to your site to see what kind of a difference they make to your sales. This is a fantastic way to understand which changes actually had a positive effect.

2. Pay attention to your meta descriptions

It is well known that meta descriptions are no longer a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm – this means that they do not have an effect on where your website is ranked.

However, for eCommerce sites, meta descriptions still have a very important role to play.

Firstly, you can think of meta descriptions as a simple advert for why a potential customer who is browsing search results on Google, should choose your page. Updating meta descriptions is quick and easy, and having the right description in place can make a difference as to whether someone chooses to visit your site or not, so make sure you put time into creating the right meta.

 

3. Create better content

The content on your website is the best way you have to convince anyone visiting to make a purchase – so it is vital that you get it right.

Many eCommerce sites make the mistake of simply copying and pasting text from a supplier’s site or (worse) a competitor. It is crucial that you should take the take to create unique content for each product.

It’s a great idea to make sure that your product content is snappy, and even more important that a visitor can skim read it. You can make this easier by adding in obviously defined sections such as bullet points for key information.

4. Allow guest checkout

Too many eCommerce sites still insist on customers signing up to an account before allowing them to purchase. And yes, while it can be very valuable from a loyalty and repeat business perspective to have customers with site accounts, this should not be prioritized over actually making a sale in the first place.

22 per cent of customers who abandon their shopping cart do so because they were forced to create a new user account. So nearly a quarter of shopping cart abandonment examples could be avoided by simply having a guest checkout option.

5. Offer a discount code to capture emails

Of course, it is natural to want to get information from potential customers, such as their email addresses, so that you can send marketing materials and entice them to buy later.

So why not kill two birds with one discount code?

Customers love to get money off their purchases so offer them a discount in exchange for signing up to your emails. The lower price will also make them more likely to buy from you – so this has a real dual benefit.

6. Improve page loading speeds

Customers can be seriously put off by websites that load slowly. When a page does not load quickly the chance of them bouncing from your site rises dramatically – and the reality is that improving your page loading speed is something that almost any site can do easily. One of the key ways to do so is to look at the image file sizes on your site.

Large image files are the biggest culprit in slowing down your site, so compress the images and re-upload them.

 

Don’t forget to check back for more great tips on how you can improve your eCommerce store to sell more and convert better.