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With each passing day, our e-commerce industry is growing further. A State Bank of Pakistan report showed that the number of online merchants in Pakistan was 905 at the end of 2017, a number that continues to grow. However, amidst all this competition, it is becoming increasingly difficult for new e-commerce websites and startups to make their mark.
As a startup itself, the team at Pakistanistores recognizes how difficult it is to establish yourself as a leader in the e-commerce industry. In this article, we outline strategic tips that you can make use to get ahead of the competition and increase your sales two-fold.
1. Use Personalized and Effective Call to Actions:
An integral part of increasing conversion and sales is to optimize your call-to-actions. A call-to-action (CTA) is an element (such as a label or button) on a page that tells the reason to perform a specific ‘action’ such as click on the checkout button.
In an e-commerce setting, the most important CTAs are generally the ‘Add to Cart’, ‘Buy Now’, or ‘Checkout’ buttons. However, the issue is that most websites often restrict themselves to just these limited CTAs.
You can make use of CTAs to not just trigger purchases but to increase customer loyalty as well. By strategically placing CTAs for subscribing to your mailing list, or following your social media, you link yourself more closely with your customers.
Furthermore, personalization of these call-to-actions is highly important as well. Generic call-to-actions are a thing of the past and if you want to drive customers to make more sales, you should be specific with your CTAs. This does not mean that you should customize CTAs for each individual customer but instead means that you use specific CTAs for particular segments.
For instance, if you have customers that abandon the shopping cart more often than it might work if you replace the ‘Add Now’ button with ‘One-Click Purchase’ button that might lead to increased conversion.
Image source: BigCommerce
2. Declutter and Simplify Navigation:
It is not just about adding and personalizing call-to-actions, but making them the main focus on your web pages as well. Research shows that customers get annoyed and might turn away from your website if they cannot find the information that they need.
A major mistake that most small-to-medium sized e-commerce owners make is that they put too much information on their pages and use highly complex navigation. The information overload can confuse customers and reduce conversion. This is the reason it is important to declutter and simplify the navigation menus on your website.
The benefit of minimizing navigational elements on key pages (such as on your products page) is that the visitors’ eyes will focus more on the information and hence they will pay more attention to your CTA. This makes them more likely to follow through with the CTA rather than bouncing from page to page.
However, this does not mean that your navigation elements should be so little that the customer cannot find their way through the website. Instead, the best practice is to make use of navigation menus that the customers want and that will not distract them from your CTA.
3. Make use of Remarketing:
Remarketing is a method of advertising which enables you to reach out to prospects and potential leads who visited your website but did not make a purchase. There are several benefits of remarketing such as increased reach, greater awareness, and most importantly, higher revenue.
The concept works on the simple logic that users who previously showed interest in your products are likely to make a purchase if you reach out to them through personalized campaigns.
For remarketing, you will need to first keep a track of the visitors on your website. For this remarketing audience, you will then have to create unique ads that trigger them to ‘come back’ to your website to make a purchase. Often, something like a discount or freebie can get these potential customers interested.
After this, you will have to run dynamic ads based on who the users are i.e. remarketing audience or general audience. Google AdWords and Facebook advertisements are great tools that you can use for remarketing as well because of their dynamic and pervasive approach.
Image source: WordStream
4. Provide a Money-Back Guarantee:
One of the biggest challenges of e-commerce in Pakistan is to gain the customer’s trust. The industry has not yet been readily adopted by the people and therefore it is an uphill task for small e-commerce ventures to earn the confidence of the customer.
Some questions that come to the customer’s mind when considering a purchase is risk aversion, often this is associated with questions such as: What if the product is not as desired? What if the size does not fit? Even the smallest of purchases can leave the customers confused because of these questions.
An effective step towards gaining the customer’s trust is to offer a reassuring money-back guarantee. It could be anything such as a ‘checking warranty’ or a ‘money back if the customer is not satisfied’ clause in your sales but this can actually go a long way. Remember, the more risk you remove from a lead’s decision, the more likely they are to convert and buy from you.
5. Get Yourself Listed on Pakistanistores
Pakistanistores is a product search engine that has over a thousand daily users who search for all kinds of products. An effective manner for driving organic traffic towards your website is to get your e-commerce website listed on Pakistanistores.
In the past year, the search engine has generated sales of over a million rupees for various online stores in Pakistan. The reason this strategy is so effective is because of the high popularity of Pakistanistores – a number of online shoppers in Pakistan who are looking to purchase a product first search for the product on Pakistanistores to decide where to make the purchase from. As with the other online stores, you can boost your sales in Pakistan by listing your products on the search engine.
The best part is that the service is free of cost and you can get yourself listed by providing details of your e-commerce website. You can reach out to Pakistanistores for a listing request via our contact page.
Conclusion:
There are several strategies that you can use to boost sales and increase traffic on your e-commerce store. These include the use of personalized call-to-actions, de-cluttering your navigation, utilizing ad-extensions, providing a money-back guarantee, and listing your products on Pakistanistores.
