SALES TIPS: HOW TO SKYROCKET SALES ON YOUR PRODUCT BUSINESS WEBSITE
If you’re hoping to increase sales, you’re on the right track. Because today, we’re going to get into some sales tips.
Increasing sales is the key to any successful business. But the quick spike in revenue isn’t the only benefit you’ll get.
Increasing sales has an exponential value.
According to research conducted by Monetate, loyal shoppers are worth 5x more than their first-time counterparts.
By adding to that first sale with subsequent sales, you can completely change the way your customers interact with you.
It’s critical to make as many first sales as you can. Then you want to keep improving your funnel so you can effectively sell to as many new and old customers as possible.
In this article, I’ll show you 6 of the most important areas you need to focus on to start increasing sales on your product based business website.
Let’s get started!
Sales Tips #1 | Create A Homepage That Sells
One of the biggest keys to success in sales is to think of your homepage as your digital storefront. It’s one of the first pages users will interact with, so it should guide them to the places you really want them to visit.
The most important part of your homepage that you need to focus on is the “Hero Section”, otherwise known as above the fold.
That is the top banner, photo slider, or whatever you have right at the very top of the page under the main menu. This is where you’ll make that first impression and it’s also likely to get the most clicks.
What to put there? Your most important call to action.
I’d recommend showcasing things like:
New products/collections
Any sales you have going on
A link to your shop
Further down your homepage, you can place another slightly less important call to action to direct traffic elsewhere. This acts as more of a fallback because most users will click that top link. This could be things like:
Your top 3 selling categories
A link to learn more about your brand
Read your blog (more on this later)
Although the goal is to sell your products, you shouldn’t only link to pages with those products. This can come across as being too salesy and doesn’t give new customers the opportunity to learn more a bout your brand first.
Conscious buyers will want to get to know the face or team behind a brand before they purchase. Use your homepage as an opportunity to guide users to pages to do just that, like your blog, about page, or an opt-in to join your email list.
Sales Tips #2 | Make Sure Your Main Menu Is User-Friendly
We just talked about how to build a user-friendly homepage that is primed to sell. But what about the rest of your website? It’s really important to think about how you can guide a user around, instead of giving them LOADS of options (which only leads to confusion).
When it comes to sales tips for success, my biggest advice is to keep your main menu simple and to the point.
I know it can be tempting to have these really complex drop-down menus that give your customers all of the category options up-front. But think about how you can get them where they want to go in three clicks or less, without overwhelming them with everything at once.
This could mean having a “Shop” navigation item that takes them to a page with all of the categories.
Or, maybe you want to divide things into categories such as Women, Men, and Kids, and then a few select sub-categories in a drop-down menu like Shirts, Jumpers, and Dresses.
The rule of thumb is to keep your main navigation simple and clean. Keep drop-down menus organised and only use them when they are essential.
Sales Tips #3 | Your Checkout Process Needs To Be Easy
Let’s chat for a second about your checkout process. The easier you make this, the more people will actually follow-through with buying things. This also equals more money in your pocket.
Make your “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” buttons easy to see by giving them a unique colour that stands out on the page. You want to make the cart icon or button easy to spot so people know where to checkout.
Once a user is in the cart, they should see the following pages:
Cart page where they can review everything and proceed to checkout
Checkout page where they enter their billing, shipping, and credit card info
You can either have them checkout on the page above or give them one last opportunity to review their cart. Personally, I prefer having the checkout and review on one page to simplify the process.
Whenever you’re considering the user experience of your website, ask yourself: how can I make this process even easier for my customers?
Sales Tips #4 | Share Your Core Values
As I mentioned earlier, customers today are very interested in learning about the brands they buy from. We are all conscious consumers who want to spend our hard earned money with brands who have similar values to us. One of the sales techniques you can use is to make your values obvious right from the get-go.
Add your values to your homepage or about page so that customers can see them easily. This establishes trust and shows how important these things are to you.
Your values could be ethical:
Fair-trade
Consciously scoured materials
Vegan/Cruelty-Free
All natural or organic
Ethically manufactured
These kinds of core values are ideas for green beauty brands, slow fashion, and other brands with an ethical component. What makes your brand stand out? Why does your niche like to buy from you? These are the things you want to showcase here to connect with your buyers.
Your core values could also be customer or quality focused:
A money-back guarantee
Great return policy - stand behind your products
How is the product made?
What is the quality like? Are the fabrics or materials unique?
Share testimonials or social proof about how amazing your product is.
All of these things build trust so that people want to buy from your brand. It shows that you stand behind your products and value your customers, while testimonials showcase how happy others have been with your product. It all builds up that know like, and trust factor.
Sales Tips #5 | Create Content
Creating content is essential for service based business owners, but is often overlooked for product based shops.
Perhaps you don’t know what you should write about. Or maybe you don’t understand how writing blog posts, creating podcasts or making YouTube videos could help sell your products.
Hear me out.
Creating content of some kind helps to drive traffic to your website. Without traffic, you have no one to sell to. End of story.
Having a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel wull help you to attract that niche you want to sell to.
Start by creating content that they would find helpful. What problems does your audience have and how can your products help solve those problems? Brainstorm some content ideas and I bet you’ll be surprised what you can come up with!
And, since you are a product based business, make sure you share your latest offerings in your content. For example, this could be a try-on video showcasing your new collection. Or, a blog post with the lifestyle photos and tips and tricks on how to use your products.
You can also collaborate with bloggers and influencers to create content for your brand. This could be in the form of guest posting to get in front of a new audience. Or you might want to work with influencers by providing them with free products to test out or doing paid posts.
P.S. If you want to create consistently, be sure to download the FREE 3-month content calendar, so you can start putting all this into action!
Sales Tips #6 | Have An Email Opt-In
Building up your email list means that you have the chance to jump into your potential customer’s inbox at any time. That is such a powerful marketing tool!
Plus, by opting into your email list, these people aren’t just random website visitors. They are warm leads that are interested in your products and what you offer. If you aren’t growing your list, you really need to start today.
Now, we just talked about creating content - so let’s start with content upgrades.
These are little freebies that you add to the end of a blog post to encourage users to join your email list. For product based businesses, I find that quizzes, checklists, and how to guides tend to work best. In general, courses, workshops, and worksheets are better for service based entrepreneurs.
Another way to get users to join your email list is to offer a discount code. This works SO well for product based businesses and is easy to implement using any email service provider.
Try adding this kind of opt-in to your website’s footer or as a pop-up to give those who already want to buy an incentive to do so.
And there you have it! 6 things every product based business website needs to succeed. Now put these sales tips and tricks into practice and watch your sales start to increase.
Which of these sales tips are you going to implement first? Let me know your biggest takeaway in the comments!
Don’t forget to download your FREE 3-month content calendar so you can start creating content for your blog consistently!