Online merchants have to work hard to stay profitable. When sales are declining or simply failing to meet projected growth, retailers can’t wait for improvement to happen on its own. A comprehensive strategy to increase revenue should make it easier for customers to find a storefront, have a great shopping experience, and get the information that they need to feel confident about making a sale. Here are some ways that retailers can generate more revenue online.
Enhance Your Social Media Accounts
Businesses that don’t regard social media as a viable marketing option are probably missing out on a lot of potential revenue. Likewise, businesses that have some limited social media presence but see it as a type of formality could be missing out on opportunities to connect with customers. In fact, having an account but not really maintaining it could represent a red flag for people when they’re checking out a new retailer.
To get your social media accounts in a more formidable condition, outsourcing may be a good way to manage the time and planning that has to go into making quality posts. Also, working with influencers could make you more visible to the social media shopping community.
Choose an Optimal POS Solution
Your POS solution needs to achieve several key functions. You need fast and reliable payment processing, and it needs to be consistent with all of your efforts to secure your transactions. In addition, you’d like to be able to use sales data to analyze which items are performing best for you. Analyzing sales volume at certain times may also help you learn more about your customer base’s shopping trends and determine which promotional activities are producing the best results.
Usability is an essential feature in a sales system, and retailers sometimes fall into the trap of sticking with systems that they’re struggling to use. Ideally, you and your sales team should be able to complete transactions intuitively and generate reports with ease. If you feel as though your current system is a source of frustration and having a negative impact on customer experiences, consider a more user-friendly alternative. Rain Retail Software may be a good option for sales teams to manage transactions and reports.
Improve SEO Rankings
Poor SEO performance when people are looking for products that you offer needs to be dealt with. If you’ve got exactly what a person making a query for a product would like to find but can’t find you, you’ve got a fundamental problem with site performance you need to address head-on. Working with a marketing or website management consultant could help you to identify what your site’s biggest shortfalls are and give you some options that could bump up your rankings.
Get More Feedback
A lack of product reviews on your site could be cause for concern when shoppers are reluctant to pull the trigger on a purchase. Get more reviews by reminding customers to leave feedback in your follow-up emails after their purchase. Don’t only ask for reviews along with order confirmations. This seems logical enough because people shouldn’t be able to review products that they haven’t received yet. Nevertheless, online retailers make this common mistake constantly.
Follow up with people for reviews several days after they have received a product and again a couple of weeks later. Don’t hound them much more beyond that because people may feel understandably put upon with excessive feedback reminders. However, make it a point to ask twice and time your requests appropriately. Incentivizing feedback is another good way to get reviews.
You might consider a percentage discount on a future purchase in exchange for a review. Of course, you can’t specify that you only want good reviews! Nevertheless, some reviewers feel a little more inclined to say good things about a product when they’re getting it in exchange for their input.
Ultimately, working to increase sales revenue requires calculated effort and planning. Be sure that you collect data meticulously to assess the efficacy of each of your initiatives and plan your next steps strategically.
