Posted by ChrisBarling on Tue, 25/01/2011 - 15:14
Most of us in business spend a lot of time and effort getting customers through the door. This applies whether we are trading in physical premises or on the web. However, it’s much less common to put the same effort into maximising sales once the customer has started buying. Here are my five tips to help put that right for an ecommerce website.
- Recognise the psychology. Once a customer has decided to buy, they feel positive about you. If not, they would be admitting a mistake, and no-one wants to do that. This positive frame of mind provides an opportunity for you to sell more. Just don’t abuse it with deals that provide no real benefit.
- Offer something more for something more. If they want one widget, they’re probably in the market for more or similar widgets. So, provided the margins are right, encourage further buying with special offers that reward them with better value. This might be three for the price of two, lower pricing per unit when more than a certain number are purchased, or free shipping once a certain cart value has been reached.
- Offer an upgrade to a better product. It can be tricky to explain that by spending more you can have a better product, because you don’t want to trash the one that they have already decided to buy. Maybe the way to address this is to have paid-for options that upgrade the basic product – just like car manufacturers.
- Provide enhanced service options. The most common is quicker delivery. A side benefit is that customers are more willing to tolerate slower delivery if they have chosen it to save money. Another variation of this theme is the extended warranty. This can both increase sales and gross margins.
- Make sure ancillaries are sold alongside the main product. The most common example of this is batteries with a battery-powered device but there are many others. I was speaking to a customer quite recently, and he had increased sales of a related product by more than an order of magnitude, simply by allowing it to be added to the cart with a tick box presented just below the main item.
There are many other variants on these themes and effort expended can be richly rewarded. The result can be the difference between a good business and a great business. So my advice is to get your thinking caps on now.
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