6 Ways to Boost Sales of Your E-Commerce Store

The internet has allowed many small independent businesses to open up their own e-commerce stores. Demand for online shopping has been rapidly growing according to Statistics Canada in 2014, $136 billion worth of goods and services were sold over the internet. 76% of Canadians shopped online in 2015, Canada Post says. WOAH! This a staggering amount of money and a majority of the country that was shopping online. For those of you out there that are launching/managing e-commerce stores, it’s a good time to be in the business. It’s important to remember that there are many ways to make sure that you are getting the most use of your dollars and increase sales to your store. This post features six of my top tips for maximising e-commerce sales and includes good practice examples from some of the most successful e-commerce sites.

1. Paid Traffic

Paid traffic can be one of the top ways to generate sales for your ecommerce store. Many people have not seen returns from their paid traffic efforts. However, if done properly, paid traffic can be quite affordable and generate you a lot of sales. Most often people are making mistakes when running their campaigns. The most important point here is to test your campaign with small budgets. This is especially important if you know nothing about online advertising. We recommend spending with a small budget of about $50 a day on different campaign and increase as you see results. If one campaign isn’t working, it’s okay! No need to stress. You can just create another campaign and continue testing until you see the results you are looking for. In order for your advertisement to be really effective, you need to have an understanding of your customer. Creating a buyer’s persona is a place to start if you don’t have a customer profile. Here is an example of how to create a buyers persona’s.  

2. Facebook Ad’s

Once you have a strong idea about your buyer, you can start to look at Facebook advertising. Facebook Ads are extremely versatile and there are many different variations you can use to solve a whole host of business problems like increasing website visitors and collecting leads. We will go over a couple of them today. Below is a list of the various Ads available to Facebook advertisers.

1. Boost your posts
2. Increase conversions on your website
3. Increase engagement in your app
4. Collect leads for your business

You can see a detailed breakdown of how to complete these tasks in the “Guide to Boost Sales to Your E-Commerce Store” at the end of the post.  

3. Google Ad’s

We’ve said this before and we will say it again, testing, testing, testing!!! Ad testing is monumental to AdWords success and even though it’s listed as a basic tip, it doesn’t mean it’s not important. Only by continually testing ads will you be able to find better performing ads and lift your overall performance. Linking your adWords with your analytics account and import your conversion data This seems like very basic advice. Nevertheless, it’s a good thing to include. I think that it’s worth mentioning. We also see a lot of our clients who come to us with Analytics not properly set up. This is crucial in order for you to see if your campaign is working.

Product Listing Ads(PLA’s) also known as GOOGLE SHOPPING are becoming an increasingly important part of Search Marketing for eCommerce advertisers.

Lets begin with Google Shopping

Google Shopping Ads are normally triggered when the search engine giant Google thinks that you’re searching with the intent to buy something. Here are some Google Shopping Ads – You’ll first need to create a Merchant Account with Google. Creating a Merchant Account is important, because it allows you to provide Google with a ‘Product Feed.’ After you’ve created a Merchant Account, you can provide Google with a Product Feed, by clicking on ‘Feed’ in the left sidebar and then clicking on ‘+Feed.’ You can use Google resources for more info on creating a feed. If you are operating a Shopify store, you can use a plug in. If you are using a different provider than you can contact them. Your developer will also be able to help you with this. Once this step is complete you can work on creating your Shopping campaign. You then need to go to your keyword planner (AdWords) account, click on ‘+ Campaign’ and select the ‘Shopping’ option. You’ll then have the chance to input some basic information for your ad campaign. There are a few things that you’ll want to pay attention to. The first is to make sure that your country is an exact match for the country used in your Product Feed  – or else your ad campaigns won’t be triggered.     Here, you can pick how you want to filter the products that are going to be shown for this ad campaign. You don’t have to rely on Shopping Ads for your ecommerce store. You can also run some ‘Search Ads.’ The key to seeing success in search ads is to make sure your ads are showing up under the right keywords related to your business. When starting a new campaign, make sure to select +Search Network Only Give your campaign a name and click on the all features section. Deselect the ‘Include search partners’ option and pick the location where you want your ad to be shown. When writing your text make sure that you are using the keywords that you think the user is searching for. The more precise your keywords are to the search the more likely they will click on your ad. We’ve seen success with splitting best selling products into separate ad groups. Usually starting with 20 of the best selling products and weigh where the returns are coming from. By having your best-selling products in separate ad groups, you are able to control the bidding more efficiently and ensure maximum exposure according to the ROI of that individual product. It’s important to note that when creating your search ads you want to use extensions ie., call extensions, site links, etc.. Callout extensions are beneficial, because you get to highlight aspects of your ecommerce business that will separate you from your competitors.   Below is a list of Ad extensions you can use. Sitelinks let the user easily navigate different web pages on your website. It shows the potential user that you have a speciality in certain areas and highlights the benefit of your products/services.   Conclusion This is only the beginning in the guide to understand the online marketing for e-commerce world. I hope with this information you are able to get a better understanding of the different tools available for you to grow your online business. Do you have any success stories with using Google or Facebook to drive traffic and conversion to your store?