admin
E-commerce is not just about setting up a website and getting your online store up and running. You might get sales through your website but if you are not optimizing your e-commerce store, it will not meet your expectations. To squeeze out maximum profits from your online store, it is essential that you make use of the right techniques and strategies for engaging with customers.
Generating higher sales can be a tough ask, particularly in the competitive e-commerce industry in Pakistan. In this blog post, we explain how you can increase profits and boost revenue without having to revamp your existing e-commerce store.
Cross-sell and upsell products:
Have you recently sold a smartphone to a customer? Do you know that you can increase your revenue generating by cross-selling related products to the same customer?
Often, when customers buy a brand new item such as a smartphone, they are looking for associated accessories such as the phone cover and glass protector.
You can cross-sell products by recommending related products to the customers. For example, if the customer bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 9 then you can recommend them a phone cover for the Note 9.
Cross-selling can be made easy by linking related products to one another in terms of customer needs. If you know the products that customers will need with their new purchase, you are on the right path towards cross-selling.
Similarly, the same customer that bought a smartphone from you last year is likely to be looking for an upgrade this year. Therefore, you can recommend them a more expensive smartphone to them such as the next iteration of the same smartphone they bought. This is known as upselling.
Amazon, a world leader in e-commerce, utilizes upselling and cross-selling for maximizing its profits. Statistics show that 35% of Amazon’s total revenue is generated through upselling and cross-selling products. This shows how important it is for local businesses to prioritize this.
Invest in social media:
In this modern age, one of the top drivers of e-commerce is social media, and in particular, Facebook. Investing in social media does not just mean to make use of ads and promotional content, but it also includes engaging with the customers.
Make sure that you post informative and meaningful content that adds value to your customer’s experience on social media. Rather than selling yourself, make it all about the customers and invest in producing insightful content for them.
The exact choice of social media platform that you should use depends on your particular business. If you are targeting millennials, then Facebook might be the right choice whereas if you are targeting Gen Z’s then Instagram is the platform for you.
Regardless of the platform you choose, it is important that you focus on the quality of engagement rather than advertisements and quantity of posts entirely.
Reduce abandoned carts:
Global statistics show that out of 60-70% of all customers leave online stores despite having products in their shopping carts i.e. abandoned shopping carts. This is one the primary areas where e-commerce merchants lose money and customers.
To evaluate the benefits of reducing abandoned shopping carts, let us take a simple example. Let us say that you sell products worth PKR 20,000 to 50 customers on a monthly basis. This equates to a revenue of PKR 1 million monthly revenue. However, if you reduce the 60% abandoned carts and convert those potential sales into actual sales, your monthly revenue would jump up to almost PKR 1.6 million.
There are a number of reasons for abandoned shopping carts. These include shipping prices, unexpected costs, and sometimes even just lack of interest. If customers are not aware of shipping prices or taxes when they add something to a cart, they are much more likely to abandon the shopping cart once they see that these charges are applicable.
There are several ways of reducing the abandonment rate but the simplest and most effective one is to make use of follow-up emails. You can automate the process of emailing customers who have abandoned their shopping carts, reminding them to complete their purchase or perhaps even adding a benefit such as free shipping.
Here are a few tips on how you can write follow-up emails to customers for curtailing the abandonment rate:
- Remind (and preferably show) the customers what products were there in their shopping cart.
- Make use of catchy headlines, attention-grabbing content, and attractive photos to persuade them into coming back.
- Send them a free shipping code or discount voucher to get them back in case they left because of unexpected costs. This is particularly helpful when targeting new customers.
Get affiliated with Pakistanistores:
Pakistanistores is a product search engine that generated sales of millions of rupees for several online stores in Pakistan. With thousands of daily users, Pakistanistores helps drive organic traffic towards online stores by listing their products in its search results.
Customers from all across Pakistan visit Pakistanistores to search for products that they need. It is one of the most widely used tools by online shoppers for comparing prices and finding products in Pakistan. The primary reason online stores gain so many benefits after getting affiliated with Pakistanistores is because of its high popularity.
The best part of being affiliated with Pakistanistores is that the service is free of cost. You can get yourself listed on the search engine by just providing details of your e-commerce website. If you would like to affiliate with Pakistanistores, you can reach out to us with your listing request via our contact page.
Takeaway:
No matter what the type or niche of your e-commerce store, the goal is to maximize profits and increase revenue. There are plenty of techniques that can help you achieve in this. In this article, we have presented some of the most effective strategies that you can use to generate higher sales through your online store. You can boost sales even without redesigning your entire website or expanding your customer base. All you need to do is fine-tune your current approach.
