5 ways to make your online shop more profitable

Online sales in the UK are expected to be worth 222.5 billion euros at the end of this year. That would mean an increase of almost 11 percent compared to last year.

News like this being touted about means you would be forgiven in thinking how you can capitalise on this. Or how you could increase the revenue of your own store.

Because of this, we have created a top five ways to make your online shop more profitable.

1. Collecting reviews

Current data indicates that people are 270% more likely to purchase a product with a review. This should be a priority for any business. Reviews require no financial outlay, so the return of investment is huge what makes companies like Trustpilot very valuable to you.

2. Creating an email newsletter

Email marketing in some industries is being peddled as old hat but in the eCommerce world it still is a fundamental piece to your marketing puzzle. Recent studies showing conversion rates of around 15% you'll struggle to find a better ROI in the eCommerce world. But before you create any email you need to consider does it give something to the receiver? If not, you will struggle to generate a return of investment.

3. Automated abandoned basket email

Most eCommerce CMS’ make it easy to create an abandoned basket email – the reason being it is an extremely effective and valuable tool and it can be automated. If your CMS does not allow an abandoned basket email – no fear email marketing companies like Mail Chimp can help you create one.

4. Word-of-mouth marketing

Has someone purchased from your website? Give them the opportunity to refer your website to their friends, family and connections through word-of-mouth marketing and reward them for it. We see around 2% of buyers referring the website to others, generating sales, through tools like Referral Candy; a piece of software that makes it easy and takes only 15 minutes to set up.

5. Keep the website quick

The quicker your website the more likely on the site will buy from it. Walmart, the American superstore that owns Asda, found that for every 1-second improvement in page load time, the sum of enquiries increased by 2%.

If that wasn’t enough, it has also been announced web speed helps you appear in search. An easy way to increase the speed or, as importantly, keep the same speed is to make sure the product images you upload aren’t larger than 500kb and make sure your hosting company is meeting your traffic requirements.

Be it Magento, Shopify, Woocommerce or any other eCommerce platform, the fundaments to a successful online store are the same. Yes, you may see competitors doing it differently but don’t forget the foundations are essential.

Want to learn more, please contact our digital marketing team or call us directly on 01795 255600