If your eCommerce business is not getting results, you may have considered throwing in the towel. Don’t do it! Chances are, you are a few adjustments away from having a top eCommerce site with incredible scaling potential. If you want to turnaround your business, check out these five secrets that can help get your eCommerce business on the right track.
Audit Your Sales Funnel
Many eCommerce businesses are literally one step away from major success. You see, an eCommerce business that works has a smooth sales funnel. A successful eCommerce business gets cold traffic to view their items, turns that cold traffic into warm traffic, retargets that traffic, brings them back to their site, and converts that warm traffic into a purchase. If you are not getting sales, then there is a chokepoint in your sales funnel. Your entire sales funnel could have one of three chokepoints: Your ads, your product page, or your offer. That’s it. If people are not clicking in your ads and visiting your site, then your ads have the wrong targeting, creative, or product. If people are coming to your page and not adding the items to the store’s cart, then you need to either improve the product description or product photos. If the people are going to check out and they don’t buy, then the customer doesn’t like the offer, including the shipping rate. Find out where you are stuck and fix that problem. That alone can turn around your business.
Model Success
Too often, people try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to eCommerce. The fact is, you can simply model what already works. For example, when you look at eCommerce in Canada, there are already thousands of sites generating big sales. Find a site like yours that is having success and see what they are doing right. Look at your competitor’s ads, products, product pages, and offers. If a successful store is offering bundle packs, then you should offer bundle packs. Your competitors are your best research.
Test Everything, All the Time
One thing that successful eCommerce stores do all the time is test. They test different ads, different products, and different offers all the time. These companies know that they could stumble upon a gold mine of sales with the right ad, product, or offer. However, no one knows what that goldmine is without testing. Continue to roll out new creative, new products, and new offers. You will eventually stumble upon something that will yield huge returns.
Get a Loss Leader
One of the tried and true ways to get business is to actually lose money by offering a loss leader. Stores like Wal-Mart do this all the time. A store will sell an item below its wholesale costs just to get people through the door. They know that customers rarely buy one item when they shop. With a loss leader, you can get someone into your store to buy one item and have them purchase extra items during the same visit. You will want your loss leader to be a compliment to an item that you already sell. For instance, you can sell a pair of sunglasses for a dollar less than your own cost and then offer the corresponding sunglasses case at a 50% markup. This is enough to turn a profit on a loss leader. Also, you will be able to add that customer onto your e-mail list and sell him more items in the future. Major eCommerce retailer Diapers.com has been able to build a business that Amazon brought for $540 million using loss leaders.
Invest in Better eCommerce Software
Always look for the latest eCommerce software to make your site run faster and more efficiently. There are a number of software products that can help you upsell, cross-sell, manage inventory, and send SMS alerts to your list. Look at what software your competition using and test it on your site. You’ll eventually find that the right software will more than pay itself with increased sales.
Your eCommerce is closer than you think to success. Simply audit your sales funnel, model success, test everything, add a loss leader, and invest in software upgrades. You will soon find that one change that will transform your business. From there, you will be able to grow your business to new heights.
