Steps To Increase Your eCommerce Sales and Leads for Free

Written by Alex Harris

This post is from the series “Boost eCommerce Sales and Leads”.

In celebration of my new book, I am releasing these audio blogs to help you increase your eCommerce conversion rates…

Boost_2_adviceGeneral Advice
Let’s get started with some general advice. This book covers some specific and actionable tips for your e-commerce store. This advice is based on more than thirteen years of e-commerce testing and marketing.

Boost_3_paidWeb Traffic
There are many different ways to increase traffic. We’ll start with how you could potentially do so without paying for it. The tactics will still take some time and effort, but for the most part, they are low cost or free ways to drive traffic to your website. Most of the tactics in this area are related to content marketing.

SEO Tips
SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is essential to the foundation of your website. Having a great search engine strategy will help you build long-term success.

Boost_4_mailersPromotions
The main form of marketing these promotions is through e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing is the best way to increase your revenue while building a relationship with your customers. These promotions can also be created using banner display advertising, text links, and internal site promotions.

Boost_6_uvpUnique Value Proposition (UVP)
There are probably many websites that have similar products or services to what you sell. In order to differentiate yourself from your competition, you want to establish a clear unique value proposition (UVP).

Boost_7_AnalyticsAnalytics Setup and Review
Having easy-to-review quantitative data is the foundation of measuring growth for your e-commerce website. Using these tools will give you visitor data, conversion tracking, and referral information. This way, you can make better decisions using analytics.

Boost_8_QuickWinsQuick Wins
Using analytics through qualitative and quantitative data, we can understand our target audience. But finding quantitative data is probably where the biggest opportunity is to make the most improvement on our existing traffic.

Boost_8_landingpageLanding Pages
There are many different ways to create product-specific landing pages for e-commerce. Having a great landing page strategy is the most effective way to maximize the ROI from your advertising campaigns. When customers search for your keyword terms and click an ad, they can be very impatient, so you want to have an easy-to-understand landing page related to the query they searched for.

Boost_9_socialproofUsing Social Proof
Adding media sources like CNN, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal is a great way for people to identify that you’re a credible source. You can add these to your site by running ads on popular media websites. Then add “As Seen On” next to the logos.

Boost_20_valueIncrease Average Order Value
One of the best ways to make more money from your e-commerce website is to increase the average order size of a customer’s purchase. There are many strategic ways to accomplish this goal.

Boost_10_headerHeader Suggestions
The header area of your website is the utility area. This is a functional space that guides visitors to the sections of your website that they want to go to. This includes the logo, navigation box, search box, and global links.

Boost_5_navNavigation Suggestions
Having a simple and easy-to-understand navigation is essential to any e-commerce site. The strategy is to make it clear where you want people to go. This will establish the hierarchy of all the content and products in your store.

Boost_21_GuaranteeReturn Policy and Shipping Information
Every good e-commerce web store has a clear return policy. You need to display details of your refund policy, and how a customer can return a product. This also applies to the shipping information.

Boost_11_emailsCollect E-mail Addresses
Almost everybody who arrives at your web page is going to leave. Find a way to create a relationship with your potential customers. Really, the only way to do that is to collect their e-mail addresses.

Boost_13_homepageHome Page
This may be the most important web page you have. This page will introduce your brand and outline the user experience for the rest of your website. This should be one of the main areas of your e-commerce site that you continue to improve.

Boost_14_categoryProduct Category Pages
This is one of the major templates for an e-commerce website. It can be linked from navigation and the homepage, and also receive dedicated, paid advertising traffic. People arriving at these sections will want to click or scroll.

Boost_15_detailProduct Detail Pages
This is the page that explains everything about the individual product item. Not only is this page important for conversions, but it is also great for search engine rankings. These

Boost_16_cartShopping Cart Page
Having a great shopping cart is essential to improving conversion. Along with the checkout process, most of your visitors will likely need to pass through this page before completing a sale.

Boost_17_checkoutCheckout Process
This is the most important section on all e-commerce websites. That is because everyone needs to pass through this section before completing a sale.