Ten tips for maximising sales through ecommerce

Kate Holroyd, Partnership Manager at Tiger Commerce, offers 10 top tips for e-retailers looking to maximise sales online.

1. Product descriptions: Make sure your product copy is optimised (well written, complete & persuasive). Include links to brochures, technical descriptions, buying guides etc.

2. Product images: Poor images do not inspire confidence so don’t use them. Use multiple images/views and consider the use of video to help sell your product.

3. User product reviews: Research shows that these work, increasing conversions by as much as 20%, so make sure you use customer feedback to help sell your products.

4. Cross-sell: Take every opportunity to upsell and cross-sell by linking associated products, accessories/add-ons, ‘people who bought this, also bought that’ and promotional bundles.

5. Delivery charges and returns: Make sure that these are transparent and easily located. Don’t make customers wait until the checkout to find out the delivery charge.

6. Contact details: Make it easy for customers to get in touch and always include a phone number. This can be the difference between making and losing the sale.

7. Registration: In order to reduce shopping cart abandonment, you should have a ‘proceed to checkout without registration’ option.

8. Customer confidence: Ensure that you display your secure SSL server certifications for customer data and payment processing.

9. Out of stock products: If an item is out of stock do not let customers begin to purchase it. Encourage repeat visits by indicating when you’ll be back in stock.

10. Marketing: Review your ecommerce website to ensure it is optimised for customer recruitment via the search engines. Use email marketing to build customer loyalty and engage in social media marketing via blogs, forums and networks.

Tiger Commerce is currently running a competition with a complete professional ecommerce shop solution worth £6,000 up for grabs. 100 runners-up will receive basic ecommerce websites with six months of free hosting. To enter, click here.