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To survive, any eCommerce business needs to grow and appeal to its current and growing customer base. With more options in the digital selling realm, more people turn to your competitors, if for no other reason than to try something new or a variety of the old. Chances are, your struggle to retain customers coincides with the battle to appeal to new ones, and that will need to change in 2020 if you intend to stay relevant no matter the niche in which you sell and exist. To achieve that, you’ll need to refrain from certain practices while you rely on others that will serve not only to boost sales but also to enhance your reputation and appeal to your customers’ loyalty.
No matter how long you’ve been in business, it would be best if you faced new as well as old competitors, find ways to inspire your existing buyers to stay true to your brand, and preferably use all of your resources to attract a more significant portion of your target demographic. To help you boost your 2020 eCommerce sales, here are a few bits of advice to tip the scales in your favor.
Use security certifications
Some website features and technical capabilities, such as scalability for mobile devices or simple checkout, go without saying. Still, others might be more intuitive, including posting all those security badges that prove your web store is perfectly safe and protected for every purchase. If you haven’t placed these badges on your home page, checkout pages, and other relevant places across the website, make sure you do. Simply by appealing to your customers’ desire to feel safe when they buy online, you can boost your chances to make a sale significantly.
Utilize content marketing and SEO
Image by William Iven from Pixabay
Among the many strategies that only work if you stay true to them for the long haul, content marketing and ongoing SEO efforts are the most effective for improving your sales. Even more so, they are the only possible strategy for ensuring, refining, and enhancing your reputation as a brand and for building loyalty among your existing customers. In 2020, with the surge of new eCommerce stores on the horizon and more competitors to handle, your content and SEO efforts will need to double. Most of all, you’ll need to take a closer look at how you approach your local and your global target audience and choose appropriate strategies to appeal to both.
For instance, if you have a presence in a competitive market such as New York, you should strive to use specific, targeted content relevant to your local audience and appeal to their preferences. Your strategies for boosting your SEO in New York might differ from targeting other regions of the world, which means you’ll need to localize your content to make it more relevant for the search engines and the audience. Stellar content leads to higher conversions only when you stick with your efforts consistently, hence the need to be diligent with your content marketing and SEO.
Personalize your offers and discounts
Sales are often the main reason why someone will even consider visiting your eCommerce store. It’s in our nature to look for better deals far and wide. Still, if you go that extra mile and send personalized emails with unique discount codes for each customer when there’s a special occasion (think: a birthday, or the anniversary of their first purchase from you, a memorable holiday, etc.), you’ll have an even better chance to inspire them to use the code. Not to mention that they’ll feel more valued than ever before.
Rely on the power of customer reviews
Testimonials as a form of user-generated content are certainly not a new sales-enhancing strategy, but they have grown in relevance immeasurably over the past several years. These digital bits of word of mouth serve as assurance and trust-building tools for all of your doubt-stricken customers to actually “add to cart” and stop hesitating. These reviews are the last piece of the reputation puzzle you need to focus on to get more customers on board.
Although stellar product descriptions that appeal both to customers and search engines are an excellent first step in the right direction, your previous buyers not only naturally strengthen your SEO efforts by organically adding keywords to their testimonials, but they also give your brand a new dimension other buyers can relate to. If you still haven’t started, make sure you add the option and inspire your customers to leave reviews.
Scores of sales-boosting strategies later, and you’re still not happy with the results? Maybe you’ve been missing out on the simplest or the most demanding of them all, some of which you’ll find on the list above. Use them to your advantage, and make sure to practice consistency so that you can track your growth and spot the individual tactics that work for your specific business the most. Hopefully, 2020 will be a year of success and growth for your eCommerce brand and a perfect inspiration for many years to come.
