Sell more, make more, business and eCommerce should only be so simple.
There are so many facets to a successful business it’s hard to even compile them in a single article.
But what if you were able to tweak those elements to improve your business? What if you could make small changes and earn more money?
What if boosting revenue was really as simple as selling more and making more?
It can be.
Sometimes making money is counter intuitive – who would think of scaling back to earn more? Read on to see some of the surprisingly effective strategies you can use.
Tips to Boost eCommerce Revenue
Create a Network – You need a solid network online to be successful, test ideas and trade favors from time to time. Establish a network at the same time you’re establishing your business.
Raise Your Prices – Don’t go over the top here, but a small 5 to 10 percent increase may not even be noticed on your ecommerce website, but you’ll certainly notice those extra dollars tricking back to you.
Increase Website Information – Spend some time updating your website to include plenty of contact information, email forms for questions and a section with tips or frequently asked questions. This frees up your customer service time to do more profitable things.
Cut Bad Clients – If you have clients that are causing you endless headaches and problems, consider finding a way to block that client or simply elect not to business with them. You have the right to refuse service or product to bad customers if you’d like.
Look for New Supply Lines – Stay on top of your suppliers or affiliate partners. Prices change and you may be paying more than you need to. One switch and you’re suddenly making more money.
Design a Deeper Focus – Trying to hit a broad target may be easier, but for most small businesses it's less successful than choosing to focus on a single market.
For example, selling a variety of cups to all women is going to be more challenging and likely less successful than selling new, specialized sippy cups to new mothers looking for the latest gadgets. Nice marketing is still (and likely always will be) highly effective online.
Put Pinterest to Use – If you’re going to sell to women (remember the sippy cup?) why not go where they are? Follow social media trends and try to stay ahead of the curve. Market where your customers are – and a lot of women are on Pinterest.
Stay Agile – There is a temptation to grow your company. But there can be drawbacks to that – more paperwork, more headaches and less agility in the market. You can steer a small ship much more easily than a big one after all.
Tweet Your Deals – If anything works beautifully, it’s the “deal”-driven environment we live in. Gather a nice following on Twitter and announce a great deal every now and again to bring in more customers and maybe snag some new ones as well.
Spread Deals Out – If you’re going to offer a deal, however, don’t offer the same deal constantly. You need to create urgency with customers, and you can’t do that if every week is “The Big Sale!”
Email Marketing – Use programs like AWeber or MailChimp to reach your clients quickly and deliver your message correctly to your target market. Just be sure to stay within the federal rules for email marketing to play this one safely.
Offer Information – Customers like to learn about things before they buy them. Sure, one guy may know exactly what a TurboDriver 310X is when he’s looking for it, but his brother or wife may need to read up a bit to be sure they are buying him just the right gift.
Include Reviews – Encourage customers to include reviews on your products. Encourage honesty, but screen the reviews as well for safety and spam. Reviews often encourage others to buy if they are honest and clearly written or marked.
Clear Inventory – If you have a large amount of inventory sitting around, have a sale and clear it out. Holding products costs money.
Find a Direct Supplier – If it makes sense for your business, consider a direct supplier. This eliminates all holding costs.
Investigate Business Banking – All banks are not created equally. Research the banks in your area to find the ones that are most supportive of businesses. Make the switch and you can save some serious fees every month.
Bundle Products – If you have two things that work nicely together, help your customers see the connection, but offering a buddle of services or products. You may shave down prices on the bundle, but you’ll sell twice or three times as much (depending on how much is in the bundle.)
Simplify the Process – No matter if you’re a one-man company or a business of fifty, the more streamlined and simplified a process, the more efficiently it will run. Efficiency means less wasted time and money.
Survey Clients – Use an email client to send out a quick survey to your clients. Ask them what they like and what they don’t like. Then actually put the results of your survey to work.
Take Charge of Your eCommerce Workforce
Outsource – This is an increasingly global economy and small business should be putting it to use. Look for outsourcing opportunities for mundane or skilled labor outside of your town or even country to save costs.
Negotiate Your Deals – You wouldn’t be surprised if a client asks for a lower price so why don’t you? Negotiate with your supplier to buy your raw materials or inventory at a lower price.
Cut Labor – Businesses change and as hard as it can be, you may be in a position to cut a position or scale it back to part-time. There is a healthy balance of loyalty and profit, but cut away any sluggish performers.
Avoid New Office Expenditures – You get a tax deduction on any purchases for your office – they don’t have to be new. Save money and buy functional, used office furniture. Money saved is money earned.
There are countless ways to improve your profits with simple tweaks to the business. Cut a product. Add a new one. Change a price.
Making one or two small changes can dramatically change your business and as you implement more changes, you can only expect to see greater earnings from your efforts.
Hi Uttoran Sen, Interesting article and easy ways you shared to increase eCommerce revenue, but can you give share some ideas how to get customers to review our products?
hi Ehsan,
thanks for your comments, glad you liked the article and found the tips useful,
About getting feedback from the customers, I would suggest you to get some professional reviews. Try Johnchow or chrisg, yes they are expensive but their feedback and openion is invaluable.
Make some offer for the visitors of those blogs, perhaps give away some free licenses and ask for reviews in return.
Customers openion and feedback is an important part of the eCommerse business model, will surely cover more about this aspect in my next article.
Will try it, Thank you very much Uttoran Sen.
Networking is key to be getting those sales through e-commerce.
The point of giving away deals is more appealing to be getting those sales through your users.
Very nice points, and every point is very useful for getting what you need.
hi Samuel,
thanks for your comment, glad you found the points useful,
Yeah, the more you network and learn about your customers, the better deal you can provide them.
Wow, Uttoran. Lots of information here. At first, I thought ‘raising your price?’ But it makes sense. Even a dollar raise on a product that sells by the hundreds may be a goiod idea and give you great coin. And like you said, it may not even be noticed. But best not be sneaky about it eh? I think before one raises a membership or a product even one Dollar, best tell people about it.
hi Ivin,
thanks for your comments, glad you found the article informative,
Surely, one should not be too sneaky about the price rise, however, you brought up a good point. A price rise notice is also a great way to boost sales. It works just like the discount offer. Everyone wants to buy at cheaper rates, and nothing but a future price rise acts as a catalyst in forcing your customers to make a quick buy!
Hey Uttoran! Nice tips out here. I recently joined Pinterest and must say that it’s actually a hub for all those internet-geek women out there! Cheers
hi Raaj Trambadia,
thanks for your comment, glad you liked the article,
Pinterest is great, a total women dominated social networking site and the best part is that none there are afraid to buy. The moment they see anything cool, they will buy it.
best of luck for Pinterest, hope you make the most out of it.
Well, it doesn’t really seem to work well right now! But I’ll keep on going! When there’s a will, there’s a way right? Cheers 🙂
It works pretty well Raaj,
but you need to first build a following there, take this path:
1) Use creative commons images from flickr and pin quite a few every day and build a strong board.
2) Once you got some good followers on the board, then start to suppliment some pins with amazon etc. affiliate product links. Remember, use un-known link shortners, else they will change your affiliate links to their own…
Hey, First off, I don’t have a ecommerce site. Still I have some tips.
The site look is so helpful
You should keep a light theme like flipkart and the user experience should be smooth.
This can help a lot.What you say ?
hi Jafar,
thanks for your comments and tips,
Yes, a light theme like flipkart can be helpful, i have never bought stuff of amazon but from flipkart i have already started to purchase. However, the reason is mostly the pay-at-delevery option.
Hi Uttoran,
Digging the tips.
Cutting bad clients is a must. Dissolve attachments. Let go bad matches.
Make room for good matches.
People put up with abuse, desperate to make money.
Forget about it. Let go energetic anchors to make room for more prospering relationships.
Thanks for sharing!
Ryan
hi Ryan Biddulph,
thanks for your comments and suggestions,
Yes, one does need to take those hard hitting decisions at times. Cutting clients, especially the bad ones, is never easy. But still it just needs to be done.
eCommerce tactics like what you’ve described above can be used in almost any format really… Services, Consulting, whatever.
These are great tips and I appreciate you putting this list together.
Ryan H.
hi Ryan Hanley,
thanks for your comments, glad you liked the tips,
Surely, all of these tips can be applied to almost any form of eCommerce business.
Hi,
This is such a good article with a lot of great suggestions for online businesses. I like the one about having a deeper focus and bundling deals. They all so like solid ideas. Sally
hi Sally Brown,
thanks for your comments, also, thanks for voting and commenting it on blogengage,
Great to know that you found the article useful and liked the ideas.
I’ve taken up using Pinterest to market to women. I’ve created a fashion site which I’m trying to make as Pinterest friendly as I can. I hope some of the fashion photos will get repinned repeatedly on Pinterest. Good tip.
hi Brian,
thanks for your comment,
Yes, Pinterest with a fashion niche can be a great recepie for success. I have seen so many pins and re-pins for those fashion pics, surely women loves fashion.
Hello Uttoran,
Great article. All ways sounds interesting and effective to build a successful eCommerce business. The 2 tips which i think are more effective are Networking And Social Media.
Networking: The best way to do networking is to be there when people needs you. Help them, serve them and you’ll find your network growing.
My way of networking is by doing favor for people.
Social Media: As you mentioned in your article that tweet your sales, offers, share them on Facebook. These are really good ways to grab sales after all sharing is caring.
Thanks for the awesome post.
Romy Singh,
hi Romy Singh,
thanks for your comments, good to know that you liked the article,
Surely, a good client relation and being there when it matters most, will definitely help in the long run. Going favor is great, am not perticularly good at it, but am good at returning the favor which is equally important in maintaining a relation.
Increasing the prices with as little as 5 or 10% can have a great impact on our results. Therefore, I can say from my own experience that this will work perfectly, provided we differentiate from our competitors and offer either superior products or better customer service.
hi Jack Sander,
thanks for your comment,
Yes, a little increase in the prices always helps. Superior products and better marketing backed up with excellent customer support can surely help a lot in the long term, especially on the client retaining part.
Yes, there were numerous studies that showed the importance of loyal customers. Gaining new customers costs almost double as retaining the base of customers. Therefore, a company should emphasize on customer loyalty programs.
Uttoran, very timely information as I am about to launch my blogging book and I had been learning about ways to attract sales to the book and create a business around that book. And yes, streamlining is definitely high on my list of things to do with all of my business ventures.
hi Marcie,
thanks for your comments, glad you liked it,
Creating a business around a book sounds like a great idea. There are some people online who have done this successfully, but you will have to create some real buzz in order for it to work out.
anyway, best of luck, keep us updated,
Do you know anyone who did this personally? I would like to contact them for more information. Let me know. Thanks.
from the top of my head, Danny Iny – http://www.firepolemarketing.com/blog/
did fairly well with this ebook.
The actual book is named engagement from scratch, and you can get it from here:
http://www.engagementfromscratch.com/
The art of non-conformity, http://chrisguillebeau.com/
he is perticularly famous for his manifestos, type of ebooks, and uses it to promote his blog, himself and his brand.
i think we need to go every possible ways above you mentioned. but finally everyone must do a lot of hard work in order to generate and boost passive revenue from ecommerce websites.
hi shenoyjoseph,
thanks for your comment,
Hard work has no alternative, one has to work hard. Whether it is networking and marketing, or simply keeping the site well updated or checking emails and replying them on time… hard work awaits at every end, and there is no escape.
At some point one does need to delegate part of the work to others, outsourcing that is, however still managing the work outsourced is still part of the overall work.
Hmm, I just hope I can remember all these things..
hi IT Rush,
thanks for your comment,
bookmark it, then you can reference them in future as well,
I find that a short -term boost to revenue can be achieved by holding a sale or offering a particular product at a reduced price. Not only will this increase sales in the short-term, it also creates interest and drives traffic to your site. Sometimes, you have to think outside of the box.
thanks C Shedwick,
for your comments, glad you found the points useful,
Yes, creative and unique method, outside the box ideas are always helpful.
Uttoran Sen very nicely written article at this time i don’t have any eCommerce website but i am planning to start my own webhosting company. This article will really help me in future. thanks
hi Zeeshan,
thanks for your comment, glad you liked it,
Web hosting company sounds great, best of luck with it. Yes, i guess the basic laws of eCommerce will apply to your web hosting business too.
Theories never work in real life situations. I am trying my hands on ecommerce and I know how easy it is to give fundas without having first hand knowledge , but reality is totally different stuff altogether.
hi Bishwajeet,
thanks for your comment and observation,
yes, theories are one thing and applying them with success is quite the other. I had my share of problems with my product launches too, there is the technical aspect where the superiority of the product and it’s effectiveness will matter, but the marketing is where all the sales is.
It all worked out nicely for me though, hope you get your own eCommerce success,
Looking for other suppliers is smart. We have a site for medical uniforms and one of our suppliers is going out of business. Thankfully we have 10+ others. That’s an important part of any business. You never know when you can lose a supplier. Nice tips!
hi Lisa,
thanks for your comments,
Yes, always good to have more than one supplier, that way your customers also gets more alternatives to choose from and as you mentioned, if someone goes out of business, it won’t effect you much.
hi Rizwan,
thanks for your comments,
Yes, design matters, with so many platforms available and including the mobile platforms which people use to browse and shop on the move, i guess even compatibility of your eCommerce site is very important.
Using premium themes and platforms for the eCommerce can be useful in this regard. Then one can leave it to the experts to work on the compatibility and other design issues.
As for the content and images, i guess one just have to do it himself and make sure it is pretty nicely done, so as to attract more sales.
Hi Uttoran Sen
I like your article it is very good ideas to Boost eCommerce Revenue.
it’s very useful to every body.
thanks
hi cna training,
thanks for taking out your time and making this comment,
always better to leave your name on the comment, that way i can better address you,
anyway, glad that you found the article useful,
cheers,
Great article Uttoran and certainly how simple you have made for client will raised up your sales and mean while if you offering your product daily on different social media channels with proper strategy that’s also give up the boost to the sale.
Thanks for sharing a great compile list!
thanks Ayaz,
for your comment, always good to hear positive feedback,
I always look forward to simply things as you specified in your article, really great article.
thanks Suraj for your comments,
glad you liked it,
One thing that I recommend is to look at and decide where you will draw the line at what you give for free from the start.
I gave away tons of stuff early on in my business that cost me lots of sales. it helped in many ways, but knowing where you will draw the line right from the start will help you know when to say no to a potential customer.
Also, some people will rave and love you for everything you give for free. the moment you ask for compensation, they run for the hills and call you bad names.
Accept that as a fact, its not worth getting angry over or worrying about. it WILL happen no matter what you are trying to sell.
hi James,
thanks for your comments and your valuable inputs,
Yes, having it all planned, in terms of how much to give for free and when to draw the line matters a great deal. The freeloaders never pays, however, they do help in promotions and getting the word out and if there is a free way of getting in, then the chances of payments are slim.
So, eventually the line has to be drawn, knowing that line in the first place will surely help.
Email Marketing and talk more in the community are the most effective ways to become success. Just likes Shenoyjoseph said, hard work is always have to be there, in order to boost revenue, Thanks for great tips.
hi Ferb,
thanks for your comment, glad you liked the tips,
Email marketing is surely effective, especially if you can afford aweber or the paid version of mailchimp, as the follow up email feature is very good for building lasting and loyal email subscribers.
I like the Pinterest part, I think pinterest can really boost things very well.
hi sushen,
thanks for your comment,
yeah, Pinterest is great, I already feel am addicted to it, i can imagine how glued the ladies are on the Pinterest network,
I cannot stress how important it is to outsource! I did not believe in it at first but your time is so incredibly valuable and not using it properly will provide disastrous to your eCommerce. Send out things that are cheap and do not need your personal touch. Don’t waste your time though with gimmicks on SEO. That should all be manual if done at all.
hi Scott,
thanks for your comment,
Yes, outsourcing is always helpful, whether passing on the grunt work to others and saving your valuable time, or getting things done by others that you are not meant to do or perhaps others can do it better… either way, unless you have some free time on your hands, you will always be stuck and have no room for growth.
And yes, seo gimmicks that are not worth doing in the first place, should not waste your valuable time for sure.
You have listed some veery good tips here, I think I can relate to the one about raising your prices, I seriously under price myself. 🙂
Truly a great tips for standalone ecommerce store to increase its revenue. Comparison shopping search engines are an additional resources an store owner can use to expand their products or brands and gets more visits and sales.
I think getting people to leave reviews is an excellent way to boost sales for ecommerce websites, the downside is you need to get quality reviews, a 2 or 3 star out of five just won’t inspire people so its’ important to keepm your eye on any product revies and moderate accordingly.
First of all congratz for earning me as your Regular reader :-)!…
Yes, As I’m working with a salon equipment company they are just relying on their Review which needs to be 100% or else round about 95 percent. As the competition is on its peek over Amazon so..The y just stopped their sales on amazon for more than a month to convert that 90% review to the 100 or 95 % review of their customers that what a review works to increase your sales.
I don’t think that raising the prices arbitrarily is a good idea. It depends very much on the product and your competition, but I’ve tried that recently and it turned out that my revenues collapsed completely.
Good point here. These will surely help my online store. Thanks a lot.
Hi!
I want to ask you that if you are an individual then managing the e -commerce online will be a great task then what should we do.
hi Himanshu Rawat,
thanks for your comment,
The easiest way is to get a VA (virtual assistant). You can get one in under $100.
Other than that, you might try and find a good partner, who would like to invest time or energy into your venture,
regards,
Uttoran Sen,
Simple yet effective tips for a e-commerce website
Fab post, you’ve mentioned some excellent points. Personally I think the ecommerce software you choose really can be your best friend, the one I’m using at the moment has a lot of features that not only save me time, but over time have helped me to boost sales, such as the statistics centre and email centre.