Skyrocket Sales on Your Online Store: Your 2022 Action Plan

The web counts 177,000 active e-commerce sites reaching a total of 112.2 billion euros in Internet sales (according to Fevad’s annual report on the state of the e-commerce market). Would you also like your online store to get a piece of the pie?

Trustt guides you! Discover 6 effective actions to skyrocket your online store sales in 2022.

1. Creating Your E-commerce Site

To maximize your sales on the web, you must start by building the foundation: creating a functional and secure online store.

The Internet is full of free solutions available to build your e-commerce site such as Wix, WooCommerce, WordPress, or Shopify. Choosing the right platform for your business is not simple. Each tool offers different features adapted to individual needs. Compare the various solutions and their functionalities to find the platform that suits your business. To help you, here is some indicative information about the web platforms in the market:

• Wix: positions itself as the simplest solution at an unbeatable price for creating a professional online store.
• Shopify is the reference e-commerce platform in the market.
• WooCommerce is offered for free on WordPress. You can therefore associate your online store with your existing business website.

Securing your website is important for your future consumers. Indeed, 84% of customers do not complete their purchases on unsecured online stores, according to Simplébo, which represents a real loss of earnings for your business. Don’t hesitate to contact your hosting solution who will help you best for this crucial step.

2. Develop product pages that convert

To appear on search engines like Google, your online store must be fed with optimized and quality content. This is what we call natural referencing: positioning all the editorial part of your website on a selection of keywords, in order to be visible on well-determined queries to your targets.

Working on your natural referencing (or SEO) allows you to stand out from the increasingly fierce competition in e-commerce.

While SEO will help you attract qualified traffic to your online store, it’s also the quality of your product pages that will ensure you a substantial conversion rate and an increase in item orders.

The content of product sheets must be carefully crafted and exhaustive, with information to reassure the visitor. Here’s a checklist of elements that must be present on a product page:

• The product name,
• At least one high-quality visual,
• A concise description, a sort of introduction in 2-3 lines,
• Product-specific options (size, color, container),
• Product availability,
• The price,
• Details on shipping costs to avoid disappointment later in the purchase journey,
• An add to cart button,
• Reassurance (secure payment, customer service/after-sales service, product origin, quality certificate, free returns, etc.),
• Similar products (cross-selling).

It is also crucial to optimize the design and ergonomics of your product pages: colors, font size, headlines, photos, reading direction, and information hierarchy.

Indeed, if the texts are too small or if the contrast level is not sufficient, if the information is given in a confusing order, users will miss the elements that will allow them to put the product in their cart and finalize the transaction.

To improve the online sale of your items, you can create product page templates that convert. These templates facilitate the work of your marketing team and help you maximize your conversions more quickly.

Note that online shoppers are increasingly concerned about eco-responsible approaches. In fact, 53% say they take environmental, responsible, or ethical elements into account in their online shopping habits. Therefore, be sure to add all information about origins, provenance, transportation, and materials used, especially if your products are made in France! Among the responsible practices implemented by buyers: grouping orders to limit deliveries (71%), favoring the purchase of items from French sites (68%), or opting for delivery to pickup points (66%).

3. Refine Your Customers’ Buying Journey

Visitors browsing your online store go through several pages to learn about your product or service offering: the pages they browse and follow before reaching the shopping cart payment constitute the buying journey.

It’s important to refine this path to better guide your visitors through their purchases without losing them along the way.

Don’t fall into the trap of wanting to give customers too much information before finalizing their purchase. The buying journey should be as short as possible (ideally between 3 and 5 steps depending on your offer) and unfold in a natural and ergonomic manner. These steps are necessary to reassure throughout the purchasing process, and each of these steps must be optimized.

For example, if you lose customers as soon as they enter their details, it’s probably because the payment module doesn’t inspire confidence or the delivery methods aren’t suitable.

A practice widely used by e-commerce giants such as Amazon is 1-click purchasing (maximally simplified buying journey). Indeed, 70% of online carts are abandoned before payment of the order. The factors involved are numerous: buying journey too long, forgotten password, tedious entry of personal information, etc… By offering a 1-click payment solution on your online store, your customers no longer need to re-enter the same information, it’s memorized in a customer account and can be used for future purchases!

Offer different payment solutions! Credit card, PayPal, online wallet, the more payment solutions you develop, the more satisfied your consumers will be.

4. Fully Exploit Social Networks to Explode Your Online Sales

Social networks are no longer just platforms for chatting with loved ones or talking about one’s passions: they are full-fledged communication tools for brands.

You’re certainly already using social networks in your marketing strategy to gain visibility and awareness and showcase your products and services… By working on your posts, you maximize their impact on your audience and encourage engagement via comments, likes, and shares. Your audience grows naturally without increasing your budget.

Your social networks can also be exploited to:

– Generate more traffic to your website: social networks become your showcase, an additional lever to attract internet users to your online store.

– Finely target the audience: you create audiences based on the target you want to reach. For example, based on age, location, interests…

– Sell your products and services: create your store directly on social networks to encourage immediate purchase and improve customer experience.

The emergence of online stores integrated into social networks (like Facebook or Instagram) helps you more effectively reach your target audience by showcasing your products and services. This feature allows them to purchase products they see in their news feed without leaving the platform environment. Another key feature is the ability to launch Social Ads campaigns on these platforms with extremely fine targeting. Social networks meet all business objectives and perfectly complement your other strategies, such as Google Ads campaigns or optimizing your website’s natural referencing.

Social Ads campaigns are also essential in your marketing strategy to ensure your visibility and promote your products and services directly on the platforms used by your audience. A real advantage to increase the sales rate and ensure the development of your online store!

5. Use Customer Reviews as a Conversion Lever for Your Online Store

Customer reviews are now at the heart of business concerns as they have a direct impact on their reputation. Having negative reviews is not a disaster; the important thing is to respond to them to prove that you are listening to your customers and willing to improve. Publishing customer reviews on your online store allows you to show proximity to your customers.

Moreover, positive reviews will encourage other visitors to make a purchase. Indeed, they will look for reviews to get a better idea of the product quality and customer experience.

The more reviews there are, the more confident internet users will feel, and this also applies to negative reviews if you have responded to them well!

As a cherry on top, the customer reviews you have collected will allow you to better understand your satisfied customers in order to retain them. You can thus create a loyalty program dedicated to these happy customers (who are not hesitant to say so!), invite them to VIP events, or even transform them into brand ambassadors.

Using dedicated customer review solutions allows you to set up automated emails to request feedback from your customers a few days after a purchase and automatically integrate them into your product pages.

Do you want to obtain rich and authentic customer reviews to boost your sales? Build a solid e-reputation with Trustt’s ambassador programs and collect comprehensive customer reviews – written or video – that shed light on all product characteristics (sensory aspects, effectiveness, usage, packaging…). Integrating the review module on your product pages allows you to guide your prospects towards products that perfectly match their expectations. Additionally, Trustt reviews are incorporated into Google’s rich snippets, which helps to reinforce the credibility of your products from the very first step of your prospects’ search.

6. Explode Your Sales Through Marketplaces

A marketplace is a market place that brings together different sellers. With their millions of daily visitors, marketplaces represent a real opportunity to boost the sales of your online store.
By selecting the most attractive platform for your business, you can benefit from its success and e-reputation. The principle is simple: you sign up on the marketplace, then you list your products. You can then sell your items through this marketplace. Some marketplaces handle product shipping, returns, customer service… In return, you pay commission fees on sales.

Among the many advantages:

• Multiply your visibility on a platform that can count hundreds of thousands of registered users,
• Benefit from the reputation and trust granted by its subscribers to the marketplace (secure payment, delivery, etc.),
• Expand your catchment area, with an audience coming from all over France, or even Europe or the world,
• Get more customer reviews, as marketplaces all highlight customer ratings and reviews (stars, comments, etc.) to display the best-rated products at the top of the list.

Equipped with Trustt’s product marketing software, your brand multiplies the visibility of its products on marketplaces while standing out from the competition. Integrate UGC and reviews collected during your product campaigns into your product pages to highlight your brand’s essential values and strengthen its credibility with your prospects.

With this action plan, do you feel ready to tackle 2022 and explode the sales rate of your online store? Sign up for Trustt’s newsletter and benefit from exclusive access to rich and varied content including articles, downloadable files, webinars, and training sessions.