E-commerce websites have provided with an effective platform for the businesses to reach out to a greater number of customers. Businesses across the world are ensuring their digital presence through e-commerce websites. According to Statista, it is anticipated that e-commerce would account for 12.4% of the total retail sales in the United States in 2020. E-commerce websites have shown immense progress in the past few years, Amazon was the leading e-retailing store in 2016 with the sales of physical goods reaching $46.66 billion.

There are various platforms on which you can design your own e-commerce websites, but they do not provide you with the strategies to beat the competition. Here are a few ways through which you may pull maximum traffic and escalate your sales revenue.

• Establish the trust of consumers

Trust is the major issue that hampers the growth of e-commerce websites. During the last few years, nearly 45-48% of the online US consumers have been victims of online frauds. No matter how effective your marketing strategy seems, if your website does not appear to be trustworthy to the consumers, then you would face a setback in sales revenue. Build your affiliation with cybersecurity agencies and put their logos on your e-commerce websites. Norton security, Google, Paypal, and TRUSTe are few of the companies whose logos on any website give a sense of security to the consumers

Once you have strengthened your ground and have established trust among the consumers, then no one can harm your image – you can survive the competition and sustain the growth. Make sure you have a genuine affiliation with these companies before you decorate your website with their logos. Misrepresentation would lead you to some serious legal complications.

• Integrate social networking forums

E-commerce websites alone cannot pull the traffic that you desire. Social networking forums like Facebook and Instagram connect the consumers with the brands and they unquestionably have the highest traffic. Maintaining active engagement with the followers would drive the consumers towards your e-commerce websites and would trigger the sales. Add compelling pictures of your products and attractive captions to describe the products and persuade the viewer. Make sure to maintain an active connection with the audience through your posts, you may run online competitions, ask the audience for suggestions and feedback as well.

Social networking forums are relatively less expensive marketing platforms. When you put on a product for sale, you have the option of redirecting the consumers to your website. This doubles the traffic and increases your sales

• Paid traffic

If you want to generate genuine traffic for your e-commerce websites, then pulling it through paid advertisements is one of the most effective ways. Paid traffic is normally considered as an expensive tool, well to be honest, if you do not have the technical understanding, then it would surely prove to be a waste of money for you. Paid campaigns allow you to select from a bundle of options and filters to be implemented and that’s the point where you need to have some technical knowledge. You need to know your target audience, their preferences, which age and income group they belong to, their areas vicinity, and their likes and dislikes. Only a precise and spot-on selection of filters will boost your e-commerce sales.

The most common mistake is the wrong allocation of budget. An expert advice is to start from a low budget and when you monitor that a campaign is performing well, then increase the budget on that very campaign. It’s not a piece of cake to increase the sales of your e-commerce websites, especially when the current intensity of competition. You may be equipped with the tools, but you can only succeed when you have competent skills to use those tools.

• Describe the benefits instead of features

Imagine that you come across a mobile phone in a store that says;

• It comes in 6 different colors
• Comes in high-class packaging
• 2 safety back covers included in the box
• 1-year international warranty

But it does not provide longer talk-time (battery hours), better RAM, and storage, would you buy it? Definitely not!

The customers compare the products in terms of benefits that they provide against the price paid. A product is useless if it fails to provide ultimate utility and functionality. Therefore, the benefits of the products should be highlighted on the e-commerce websites rather than the features that a product incorporates.

Clear and attractive pictures and videos are the cherries on the top. Most of the visitors skim through the pictures on the e-commerce websites and for the details, they prefer videos. So, if your website provides the visitors with the information conveniently, then your conversion rate would definitely improve.

• Launch a mobile application

One of the most lucrative steps to aggrandize the sales of your e-commerce websites is to launch a mobile application for your store. According to Statista, by the year 2021, more than 50% of the online shopping is forecasted to be done through mobile devices. Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, and all the e-retail stores have their dedicated applications because the customers prefer convenience.

In addition, the UI/UX plays a game-changing role in application design. The design should be attractive, easily understandable, and extremely responsive. If your visitor has to search for the ‘Add to cart’ button, then your application needs to be redesigned. Your sales graph would surely rise if you launch a functional application with an attractive UI.

• Customer relations and rewards

As a matter of fact, making a new customer costs higher than retaining an old customer. The victory of any brand is not depicted by how many new customers it annually makes, a brand succeeds when it retains the maximum number of old customers annually. Healthy customer relations greatly contribute to customer retention which eventually increases the sales.

Even if your product fails to satisfy the customers, your customer relations and post-sales behavior but be effective enough to handle the situation and bring back the customer. The return and exchange policies should bring convenience to the customers

Adding to it, customers love the extra purchase perks and the rewards that the e-commerce websites allow. For instance

• Free shipping on crossing a certain amount
• Discounts vouchers for the loyal customers
• Gifts on frequent purchases

Numerous e-commerce websites miss out on the effective ways to increase sales and end up with the tactics that are not cost-effective. Therefore, it is important to devise a strategy before moving ahead with a decision. An e-commerce business can only flourish when its strategy is effective and operations are efficient.