50+ Ways to Make More Online Sales

Every entrepreneur starts their own business with a great idea.

You have a great product that you think can change the world or be loved by everyone. You quit
your 9-to-5 job to grow a multi-million online store. You invest in a stunning website, build an
awesome team to fight with you. You seem to have everything ready for a thriving eCommerce
business. But it wouldn't be that simple and easy.

● The ads campaign costs you a fortune but doesn't seem to work effectively as you
expected
● You successfully got more traffics to your site but they do nothing other than leaving
● Apply tons of tips you read on the Internet but end up having no ideas on which one
works the best for your eCommerce business.

What you’re going to face with, as well as almost every eCommerce entrepreneur, is to make
the first online sales happen as making the first sales may be harder than scaling from 1st sales
to 10th or to your 100th sales. It sounds daunting at first but good things take time and you have
to take everything step-by-step in order to achieve your goals.

So how to make more and more online sales from everything you’ve had?

This guide will give you 50+ answers to that exact question. Get ready to be enlightened with
this full guide brought to you by ShopBase experts with 50+ brilliant and actionable ideas that go
well for every merchant with a tight-budget business and be smart to pick the right ones that
work best for your own business.

We group 50+ tips to make your online sales into 07 categories:

1. Email Marketing

2. Store-front Optimization

3. Social Media

4. Content Marketing

5. SEO & SEM

6. Payment, Shipping & Packaging

7. Campaign Ideas

1
Email marketing
1) Build an email list
Email marketing is one of the primary drivers of traffic for any kind of business. Thus, building
your email list is a task you should focus on from the beginning. You can leverage elements on
your website to collect email subscribers: contact form, sign-up button in header bar, email
popup, email request field in the checkout process if customers wish to receive e-bill…

2) Send a thank-you email to first-time customers

Nothing can impress customers as much as a personal touch. A thank-you email is one of the
best ways to give your customers pleasant shopping experience. You can be creative with a
thank-you email in the form of the order confirmation email with tracking status, or even with
more product recommendations to get more sales.

ShopBase will take your ​thank-you email to the next level by reminding you about their
purchase after they finish checking out in your store and boosting your store's revenue with
upsell & cross-sell offers. You can do this at ease in your store with ShopBase automatic apps
like ​Boost Upsell​ with no extra fees charged.

By sending a thank-you email to your first-time customers from your own email address, you
can impress them with a special feeling of being cared for by the owner of the store. Making
your customers pleased and trust you is the best way to get them to come back and refer you to
their friends.

3) Send personalized emails to your list

Everyone hates promotional emails. The easiest and quickest way to get people to unsubscribe
from your list is to send them bulk promotional emails. Instead, send them ​personalized emails
triggered by their specific actions on your store. Avoid sending mass newsletters with the same
content to all customers. Don’t be worried that you have to manually send emails to thousands
of customers, Email Automation helps you do email marketing the right and automated way.

4) Send follow-up emails to abandoning customers to remind them of

their carts
68% of online shoppers abandon their carts before checking out. If you already have their email
address, send them a follow-up email 2-3 days after they leave the site to remind them of items
they’re interested in but didn’t buy, and probably offer a small discount to encourage them to
come back and complete their order.

2
ShopBase ​ready-to-use and customizable email templates will not only help to better your
engagement with customers but also a perfect method to display ongoing offers to convert more
sales for your store. We also provide online merchants with SMS marketing to recover up to
61.45% abandoned carts. You can freely ​add your promotion and discount code to your emails
to encourage customers to buy more from your store and turn as many customers as possible to
repeat ones.

5) Gmail ads
Though people are communicating a lot via social media, emails have never been an old
method for both personal and business communications. In Gmail ads, your product advertising
is seamlessly delivered to customers’ inbox just as a normal email. If your copy is good enough,
you will be able to convert a lot of email readers into potential customers and sales.

Store-front Optimization
6) Produce charming product images & descriptions
Sales comes right from the first impression you make on your storefront. It is of utmost
importance to produce high-quality attractive product pictures along with convincing product
description copies. It is the very first step to get customers interested in your products and move
on to the next steps of purchasing.

It might seem easy to write the product description, but it needs certain elements to make your
description more appealing to customers

>> Learn how to write product description that will pump up your sales almost instantly

7) Implement coupon pop-ups to welcome customers

Another effective way to capture visitors into email subscribers is to use welcome coupon
pop-ups when visitors first land on your website. Not only can you collect emails and social likes
to grow social presence for your brand, but you can also convert them right into sales with a
rewarding discount code. How easy it could be to convert visitors into sales for the first time?

3
 ​ iteKit a
Source: S ​ pp

With ​coupon pop-ups from ShopBase SiteKit​, you can easily share important information like
seasonal discounts or issues like shipping delays with your visitors, and display unique offers
when they reach a certain page in your stores like the homepage, product page and the
checkout page.

8) Use exit-intent popups to prevent cart abandonment

68% of customers abandon order on the cart page, then leave and never return. Wanna prevent
them from leaving the site? You should consider ​creating exit-intent popups to target bouncing
customers, then offer them an exclusive deal to motivate them to finish their orders.

9) Install product recommendation widgets

That customers do not discover potential products they may love in your stores leads to a lot of
potential sales loss. Help your customers to find more options by ​recommending the right

4
products at the right places in your store to expose more product options and sell more to each
customer.

- On the product page when someone is browsing for a specific product, you should
suggest them with a similar item in the same category or tag. Showing phrasing like
“customers who viewed this also bought this…” or “Customers who purchased this also
looked at…”.
- Product widgets can also be displayed on the checkout page as the last try for you to
convert more sales from one customer. Since the person is already on their way to
checkout, make sure to suggest something that makes them stop to think “I'm checking
out anyway, it wouldn't harm anything if I add one more in”. Bring out something like
complimentary items, accessories, etc.

10) Up-selling & Cross-selling

Amazon used to declare that at least 35% of its total revenue comes from upsell and cross-sell
offers​. When customers view or add an item to the cart, you can apply the same success recipe
by showing a popup to suggest a higher-valued alternative (upsell) or a combo of complement
items that go well together (cross-sell). For example, a woman who buys a dress might be
interested in accessories. She might need to buy a bag or a pair of shoes later, so why don’t
you cross-sell those items to her right now?

If you choose the right products to suggest at the right time, you can easily multiply order value
from any customers.

5
 ​ oost Upsell​ app
Source: B

11) Create a sense of urgency and scarcity

People have more motivation to buy when they know the stock is limited. ​Creating a sense of
urgency and scarcity for your products to ramp up the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) feeling. It's a
clever way to get your items sold more quickly because customers don't want to miss out on the
good deals. This strategy could be implemented in the form of flash sales campaigns, copy
messages, number of products in stock in product description…

6
 12) Simplify the checkout process
Every additional step you add in the checkout process drops a few customers. You certainly
don’t want that because it hurts your final conversion rate. So, keep the checkout process as
simple and quick as possible, such as: allow checkout as a guest and not require account
registration, keep every required information in one page ​so customers don’t have to navigate to
the next pages…

>> Learn how to rescue 70% of your revenue from the biggest drop-off on the checkout page
with super-duper tips!

13) Live-chat widget on site

Install a live chat box in the corner of your store to ensure customers can get in touch with you
instantly if they need information or help when shopping in your store. If you can speak to your
customers when they need your help, the chances are that you can successfully sell to them.

14) Chat with customers via Facebook Messenger

Live-chat box still works well, but Facebook Messenger has been the rising channel to support
and build long-term relationships with your customers, as social media is taking the reign. Install
a quick Facebook chat window on your store so customers can send messages directly to your
Fanpage inbox, where you can instantly chat with them, get to know their interest, introduce
products they like in the future, and build a close relationship with them.

>> Click to learn how to add Facebook Live Chat to your ShopBase website

15) Support different languages and currencies

Believe that your products can go global? Enable your store to support different languages and
currencies (at least, support the most popular ones) so that international customers feel it
comfortable and familiar to shop in your store.

16) Optimize store for mobile devices

~50% of online shoppers’ traffic is coming from mobile devices with the rising of smartphones
and tablets. If your website is not optimized and responsive on mobile, you’re definitely losing a
great number of potential customers!

17) Create a mobile app for your store

Besides creating a mobile-responsive website, consider building a mobile app if you want to
keep customers loyal to your brand in the long term. A mobile app will also be a great tool for
your marketing strategy.

7
Social media
18) Get people to share about you on their social media
When customers are on your site, you have many ways to get them to share your products and
content on their social profiles. Social word-of-mouth will bring you a lot of referral traffic when
you have more and more shares on social media. For example, consider offering your
customers a discount code / free gift / free shipping if they share their orders on your store to
their friends on Facebook or Twitter. Not only can you boost checkout rate but you can also gain
more referral traffic from social networks sharing.

19) Get people to like/follow your social pages

People are buying more on social media. If you don’t want to lose at least 30% of your sales
from social traffic, focus on growing the social presence of your brand. One sure way is to grow
as many likes/followers on social media as possible.

20) Build a Facebook Store

People are buying right on Facebook thanks to Facebook’s convenient and optimized features
for eCommerce. Focus on building your Facebook Store to capture a big amount of sales on
this biggest global e-Commerce social platform.

21) Spark conversations on Twitter

People share, tweet, and discuss everything on Twitter. If you want to grow your social
presence and get people to talk more about you, ignite interesting conversations on Twitter and
involve people in them. The first step should be sharing or talking about some hot controversial
topics your target customers care about, then motivate them to share their opinions. When you
have built a large audience there, it would be a golden place to promote your products.

22) Run ads on Facebook

Traffic from Facebook ads is one of the main traffic sources small brands are using to scale
now. Much cheaper than Google ads and easier to target the right customers’ thanks to
Facebook’s audience filter, Facebook ads are no doubt a proven channel to generate traffic and
sales.

8
 23) Build a youtube channel
To get your brand viral, youtube is a must-target-channel in your list. Build your own Youtube
channel to deliver great videos of content your potential customers really care about (For
example: sell fitness supplements? You should consider creating a Youtube channel about
Fitness motivation, exercises, and workout instructions.) The more subscribers you get, the
more viral your channel becomes and the more referral traffic will result, leading to more
customers who buy your products.

24) Run ads on youtube

Another way to leverage youtube as a traffic and sales generation channel is by buying ads on
youtube videos. 1,300,000,000 people are using Youtube, and almost 5 billion videos are
watched on Youtube every single day. YouTube now has over one million advertisers, the
majority of what are small businesses. If you don’t want to miss one of the largest traffic sources
in the world, try Youtube Ads.

9
 25) Create Facebook Ads that target competitors’ audience
Your competitors’ followers on Facebook are your very potential customers. As Facebook allows
you to target users who like/follow specific Facebook pages, you can leverage that feature to
target your ads to competitor’s page followers/likers by creating a ​custom audience​.

26) Add Buyable pins on Pinterest

To leverage your Pinterest page as a sales channel, take advantage of the powerful Buyable
Pins button. It lets your customers buy right on your Pinterest account.

27) Use hashtags to get more searches

If you search for some popular hashtags, you will find a lot of related product and brand images.
Businesses are advertising their brands on social media using hashtags so as to get found by
interested users. For every post/images you share on your social channels, don’t forget to
include some relevant hashtags that have a huge volume of searches in the description.

28) Run ads on Instagram

Starting as a social platform for sharing pictures, Instagram is now gearing towards an
eCommerce platform, with the powerful Ads feature. Consider running ads on Instagram to
capture a quickly growing audience there.

10
 29) Build a network on Linkedin
Since becoming a professional network for people to build personal and business branding,
Linkedin has grown larger and more and more people are searching and reading stuff on this
platform. Let’s build your own network on Linkedin and promote your brand there to reach a
quickly growing source of traffic.

Content marketing
30) Start your own blog
Content marketing is king. When information is so excessive on the Internet, people count on
valuable content that they’re easy to find. Starting your own blog will be a building block in your
brand’s content marketing: it’s a place for you to influence customers, change their minds about
your products and generate endless traffic from in the future (with SEO).

31) Create viral videos

This strategy is a part of viral marketing that has never let advertisers down of its amazing
efficiency in building brand popularity. If you want to create a viral effect for your brands or
products, invest in making videos with content that can go viral (get shared by millions of
people), post them on Youtube and your social channels.

32) Get product review from customers

Product reviews have a big impact on the decision-making process of online shoppers. That’s
why popular products on Amazon normally have hundreds to thousands of reviews. You should
consider employing the same strategy if you want to drive up sales for your target products.

11
Here are a few effective ways to ask reviews from your customers: send a follow-up email after
their purchase, pop up a review request form after checkout is finished, reward them with a
coupon on the next purchase or give them loyalty points…

33) Convert customer reviews to case studies or reviews on social

media
To take the most advantage of customer reviews, you can convert them into reviews on your
social fan pages (by nicely asking customers) to write case studies on your blog. Reviews on
social channels will add up to your social presence, while case studies on the blog are good for
your site’s SEO score.

SEO & SEM

34) Optimize the website for SEO
People search keywords on Google to find the products they need. If you want your business to
survive on the Internet in many years to come, pay serious attention to your SEO ranking on
Google search. Find the exact keywords that people search if they want to buy your products,
then make sure all elements in your website are ​optimized for SEO before you work on content
creation and link-building.

35) Write valuable content for SEO

In SEO, content matters the most. Relevant, fresh, and informative content will lift up your
ranking on search engines, get people talking about and find out your brand on the Internet.
Write good content regularly, link them together to build a strong link bond that helps search
engines to index and crawl your site. Most importantly, you should build engagement for your
content on the Internet by seeding it on high-quality forums/websites to get people to discuss
and share it widely.

36) Advertise on Google Adwords

If your potential customers search for your products on Google, buy ads on Google Adwords is
a sure thing to go for. When customers search for the keywords you buy, your site will appear
first above organically ranked sites. Pay attention Page title, Meta Description of your site to not
waste any impressions.

37) Buy banner ads on ads network

If you know what kinds of websites, forums, networks your potential customers usually visit, you
can target them right there by buying advertising banners on spottable positions. Banner ads on

12
ads networks are normally quite expensive, so make sure your ads image and copy are
impressive and highly converting.

Payment, Shipping, Packaging

38) Add the most popular payment methods as possible
Confirming payment is the last step in your sales conversion funnel, so make sure you don’t
lose customers right here just because they cannot find a way to pay you! Offer as many
payment methods as you can set up, and complete your UX so that this last step is a seamless
experience.

39) Offer free shipping

If your profit margin is pretty high thanks to the low cost of goods and high operation efficiency,
consider expanding your free-shipping policy for as many customers as possible, and don’t
forget to make that selling point outstanding on your storefront. That will give customers more
confidence and motivation to purchase from your brands other than your competitors.

40) Provide clean & safe packaging

Top factors that affect people’s decisions when shopping online is the packaging. To stay
outstanding from your competitors, offer your customers high-quality products with clean, safe,
and premium packaging​. Promote your superior packaging on social channels or storefront to
motivate your customers to buy.

41) Let customers know you have shipped to their location

When customers get into your store, you can use geolocation tracking technology to detect
where they’re from, then pop up a notification to let them know that you have shipped to their
location. That will encourage customers to purchase from you because they know that their
order will be highly likely to arrive safe and sound at their doorstep.

Campaign Ideas
42) Send sample to influencers to get their product review
When there are hundreds of choices in the market, people count on influencers’ suggestions
and reviews to decide what products to go for. So why not asking influencers in your marketing
to use and review your products? They will get their review up on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube
channel, blog post…, thus bringing your products to massive exposure to your potential
customers.

13
 43) Run a survey to understand customers
It’s not a sure thing that what you sell is what your customers need. The definite strategy to
increase sales is to understand what kinds of products your customers desire. Even when you
already launch your products, you can always improve and innovate to provide better products
by running regular surveys to get customer’s insights and suggestions.

44) Offer free gifts/samples for successful orders.

For every order placed on your store, you can give away free gifts or samples of other products
to introduce to your customers. Make sure to promote your offers on the storefront (using
banners, notifications, pop-ups…) to let your customers know they will receive freebies if they
check out successfully.

45) Referral campaign: offer coupons/freebies for both referrers and

referees
People depend on others’ reviews and suggestions to make decisions online. You can leverage
this psychological behavior by running referral campaigns: offer coupons/free gifts/free
shipping/special packaging/flash shipping...for both referrers and referees if the referees
successfully place an order with you.

46) Give loyalty points & rewards

To turn your customers into happy loyal fans, consider building a loyalty program on your store.
You can grant customers points for their purchase, account registration, on their birthday, on
holiday sales...so that they can redeem their points on future purchases. With loyalty
campaigns, not only can you encourage customers to come back and buy, but you also ignite
their love for your brand in the long run.

47) Co-promote with other brands

If you sell fitness supplements, chances are that your customers also look for fitness equipment
at home or gym outfit. It would be a great idea if you can find brands that sell complementary
products to yours, and cross-promote products with them. It’s a win-win partnership because
you can leverage audiences from each other and do not hurt each other’s sales because you
sell different products, just to the same groups of customers.

48) Buy posts on influencers’ social channels

Similar to getting product reviews from influencers, you have another simpler way to leverage
their networks: sponsor promotional posts, giveaway or contest campaigns on their social
channels to target their followers if you believe they are your target customers.

14
 49) Be really active on holiday sales
Holiday sales season is the best sales craze of the year when people spend on average half
their annual shopping budget to buy good deals. Make sure you are very active on holiday sales
to capture sales and new customers in this special period of the year: run discount deals,
advertise on social media and search engines, run referral campaigns, co-promote with other
brands…

50) Run early-bird campaigns to get people to sign up

It works as a movie teaser. To get everyone curious, interested, and wait for your products, you
can run teasing campaigns to collect early-birds customers. The best ways to call out for
early-bird signups are social media, ads, forums, and combining with referral campaigns.

15
Conclusion
You’ve been shown the ideas and tools to reach your business goals, now it’s your turn to start
testing every possible way to generate your first (and more) online sales.

And never forget to be analytics-driven! No-one knows what works best for your business better
than the numbers, so make sure you measure the results of your campaigns/emails/pop-ups/ or
any optimizations, compare them together to find out the best ways to boost your online sales.

Being overwhelmed by tons of things to do?

You are not alone, let ShopBase ​helps with an all-in-one solution integrated with a set of
automated (and free) apps.

Wanna get more tips or share your thoughts with us? Let’s connect at ​ShopBase International
Community​.

16
17