[ez-toc]

Introduction

Increasing online sales is a major goal for most e-commerce businesses. E-commerce is becoming more important than ever in both Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Customer (B2C) under this quarantine circumstance, and dropshipping is one of the best and easy-to-start distribution modes for e-commerce novices to start their online stores if the budget is limited. Also, one platform seems to be leading the way of e-commerce now – Shopify. It’s an all-inclusive online sales platform with monthly subscriptions. 

In 2020, Shopify has seen a decade-high of e-commerce growth, with total revenue up 97 percent in the second quarter compared with the same period a year ago, due to a surge in e-commerce activity with COVID-19. Shopify’s popularity is not surprising. The platform is designed to help people build their own, scalable online stores, which include hundreds of built-in features and over 3,000 apps. It allows companies to sell products directly on their websites, across multiple marketplaces, and through social media.

Shopify is an excellent e-commerce platform that makes it easy to bring your store online especially for online business beginners. But setting up your store is only the very first step of the long long journey. Next, you need customers to visit your store so orders can be generated, then fulfilled and revenue can be gathered. So how do you get more sales on Shopify?

Optimize Your Store

Before driving traffic to your store, you need to make sure that your store is enticing enough to retain the customers so as to improve the conversion rate as much as possible. How to optimize your store to maximize the value of each visitor?

1. Live Chat on Website (apps)

Having a small e-commerce business, you must know the importance of turning every visitor into a repeating customer. Offline, you can do this largely through personal contact, making every visitor feel like a VIP: greetings at the door, real-time expert advice on style and fit, and so on. Online, physical closeness can’t be achieved but you can use live chat tools to provide a similar personal touch. Customers who engage in real-time chat conversations with businesses are 2.8 times more likely to complete a purchase.

Live chat is a form of customer messaging software that allows customers to talk directly to company representatives — typically those in customer service and technical support roles, among other roles. Real-time chat is a messaging system for enterprises that can be used as a pop-up chat window within a company website. 

In Shopify’s App Store, Tidio is the top-ranked live chat app. Its basic plan is free, and professional plans start at $18 per month. If you just started your business then the free plan is enough for you. Set up an app like Tidio for your Shopify store to immediately respond to customer inquiries and increase sales. 

Facebook Messenger is another free plan available live chat tool. When customers make a purchase, they can ask you questions in Messenger and get automatic order tracking and shipping updates. It’s connected to your Facebook Page so when your store integrates with Facebook Marketplace – this will be introduced in detail below – you can communicate with customers at any time.

2. Optimization of Product Page

The purpose of product pages is to help customers decide whether to buy the products (or not). This is your chance to convince them to click “buy” instead of abandoning the shopping cart. Therefore, a good rule of thumb to remember is the more detailed and accurate the content on these pages, the greater your conversion and sales opportunities.

Here are some basic elements that each product page should have:

• Clear, high-resolution images and videos
• Color, sizing, fit, materials, price, and compared price
• Detailed, accurate manual in an easy-to-read language
• Manufacturing and developing information – for example, some people prefer to buy products that haven’t been tested on animals, so you could point this out
• Social media share button
• Obvious Call-to-Action (CTA) words such as “Buy Now” – A CTA is a link or button that sends the most desired action to the site visitors. This action varies from page to page, and different CTAs will provide different capabilities throughout the customer’s journey.
• Customer reviews of products at the bottom of the page – These independent reviews have a big impact on potential customers and can do more for transformation than any basic marketing strategy – in business, we call it social proof. 

3. After-sales Service

Brilliant after-sales service will speak volumes about your business and win you, loyal brand supporters. These are the top customers who will promote your brand without your knowledge, most often through word of mouth, which is one of the best ways to increase sales. People trust the opinions of friends and family more than strangers and are more likely to use your service if recommended by someone they know and trust.

Here are some strategies to improve the after-sales service effectively:

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) 

FAQ is a list of questions & answers designed to answer common queries about your business or product. Creating FAQs can save you countless hours each week by answering the same questions. So take the time to create one. The fact that customers can access the answers to the questions they ask themselves in a simple and quick way is even more enjoyable.

• Satisfaction Survey

If your customers are satisfied, they are more likely to remain loyal to your brand. Simply asking customers about their satisfaction can help you win them over and let them know you’re listening. You can perform this operation through a customer satisfaction survey.

• Customer Support

One way of losing customers is to sell products with little or no support. To avoid this, you must invest in your support team and ensure how the company handles customer inquiries. Even if your customers have problems with your products, if they get excellent customer support from you, they may buy again. 

4. Mobile-Friendly Design

Optimizing mobile stores means more than just having a responsive design. This means that you design your site with mobile visitors in mind from start to end. A clunky mobile experience is the most likely way to lose millions of potential customers. Invest in the mobile version of your site, and if you’re already generating traffic, start getting more sales from the mobile end.

For example, when the mobile visitor lands on the product page and scrolls down, the add to Cart button appears at the bottom. This will save the visitor having to scroll back up, possibly losing his way on the page.

Your online store should be easy to navigate and easy to purchase using mobile devices. Your customers should be able to buy products within their hands and you should provide them with the most convenient solution anytime, anywhere.

Leverage Email Marketing

Email marketing is when you send business emails to “email subscribers” (contacts who have signed up for your email list and are explicitly allowed to receive your email communications).

Email marketing is used to inform, drive sales, and build a community around your brand. Modern email marketing is no longer about one-size-fits-all mass mailing, but focusing on consent, segmentation, and personalization.

5. Re-Engagement Emails

A re-engagement email is a marketing email sent to inactive subscribers. It is designed to get people who have stopped interacting with email campaigns interested again.

Your former and existing customers are the lifeblood of your organization, so you need to ensure that they are not only satisfied with the products and services but also engaged with your brand and campaign. If they haven’t made a purchase in a while, stopped browsing your site, or stopped opening your regular email, you need to create and start a re-engagement campaign to encourage them to come back.

Since the point of a re-engagement campaign is to reengage your audience, it can be safely assumed that they’ve lost interest in the content you’re sending them. You should feel free to use the re-engaging subject line. Personalize the copy to include the sender’s name and clearly state the special offer you are promoting to ensure a high open-rate. 

CTA is always critical for every kind of email, but especially for re-engaging emails. Your offer needs to surprise your audience. It has to be absolutely irresistible. This may be your last chance to regain their favor, so make sure your special offers are exactly in line with their online behavior, demographics, and buying history. Emphasize how important their ongoing business is to you and offer them a significant discount on their next purchase. 

6. Wishlist Reminder Emails

How often do your subscribers add items to their wish list and then completely forget about them? Shopping cart item is not the only thing to remind shoppers! Your subscribers are busy. The reason why customers don’t buy something on their wish list maybe because they’re not sure about the products or don’t have enough budget… Or maybe it’s because they forgot. Don’t let forgotten sales slip through the cracks. Remind your customers of what they really wanted.

Beyond the overt benefits of improving shoppers’ shopping experience, wishlists also have the ability to provide deeper strategic value to online retailers. For customers, a wish list provides an opportunity to save items if they can’t commit to them at the time and they can find items quickly no matter when they return to your store. 

• In stock – This email is sent when the product which was initially sold out but was still added to the customer’s wishlist is back in stock.

• Sold out alert – This email is sent when products are running out of stock that customers have kept on their wishlist.

• On sale – This email is sent when the products customers have saved on their wishlist are on sale.

Wishlists are essential for many people for a variety of reasons. As mentioned above, the wishlist feature is useful for businesses because it gives them insight into customer buying behavior, but wishlists clearly have value for consumers as well.

7. New Products Launch Emails

Good businesses are constantly releasing new products, services, and features. Great businesses are able to spread this information to their customer base in interesting and innovative ways, leading to better engagement and more sales opportunities.

Whenever your company launches a new product or updates an existing product, you should include a powerful email marketing campaign as part of your overall marketing strategy. Think about it: Your existing customers have already committed the purchases in some aspects of your company and product, so they’re likely interested in what happens next!

The purpose of new product release emails is not just to generate sales. If done well, new products email can help promote a connection between your consumers and your entire brand. You are advertising your bright, shiny, and new products, so you want to create a real enthusiasm that you can pass on to existing customers. That means using large, clear images and clever, concise copy. Most importantly, you want to make sure that your brand elements jump off the page and connect seamlessly with your new product.

Pro Tips: DSers – Top Ranked Dropshipping App in Shopify

It has been mentioned above that Shopify is a brilliant e-commerce platform for online business newcomers with its multiple unique features and over 3,000 apps. For those who want to start a business for free, dropshipping is the right distribution method to choose. DSers is the top-ranked dropshipping app in Shopify’s app store. It’s whited list by AliExpress – the biggest online platform dropshippers source products from – which means you can place an unlimited number of orders without restriction.

Besides being AliExpress’ official partner, DSers also have its own outstanding features and best customers services to get top-ranked. Features like Supplier Optimizer are created for one purpose only: to find better suppliers for your products. There is no small profit margin of dropshipping. If you can find new suppliers that are 5% or 10% cheaper for AliExpress products, you will increase your profits. 

With these advantageous marketing strategies and useful apps, your journey of online business should have a promising future!