How to get more sales online

Why read this? : We look at the key skills which help you take on the challenge of how to get more sales online. Learn how market research, brand development and customer experience skills drive online selling. Read this to learn how to to get more sales online.

Home » E-Commerce skills » How to get more sales online

How to get more sales online - Market research

It’s customers who drive your sales. Clearly, the better you understand who they are, and what they need, the better you’ll be able to sell to them. That’s where market research comes in. Market research is what you do to understand customers better.

Though market research can be detail-focussed, the basic process behind it is simple. It only has 3 steps. You define your business problem. You research that problem. Then you analyse the results and act on them.

For e-Commerce, the problem is usually some variation on how to get more sales online. That’ll be some mix of finding new customers or getting existing customers to buy more, or buy more often.

As per our 5Ws of e-Commerce market research article, your aim is to understand the who, what, where, when and why of your customers :-

Who

Your e-Commerce research usually starts with identifying who your target audience is. You want to build up a profile of your ideal customers.

If that’s potential customers who don’t currently buy from you, the research will focus on what they currently do, and why. For example, what drives them to choose competitor products, or to not buy at all.

Or it might be customers who do currently buy from you, but don’t buy frequently, or in large volumes. Those can also be an important source of e-Commerce growth.

What

Once you understand the who, you then research to understand what they do. This is usually driven by data, especially from secondary research. For example, you look at your store website analytics to see which product pages perform the best. Or you look at online sources like the Mary Meeker study, or the annual Auspost e-Commerce report to look at more general trends. Plus, of course, you can do primary research and ask them directly what they do.

You’re looking for ideas and insights into what might work with customers in the future, based on how they respond to current or past activities.

Where

This data gathering often focusses on where customers are, and where they go online. Customers often visit different places depending on where they are on their journey.

For example, they might look at influencer sites and social media,, if they’re still researching what to buy.

They might always check out the biggest online retailers in the category to benchmark prices if they’re close to making a decision.

And if any competitors have a strong CRM program, that might keep customers so loyal they don’t switch.

Market research helps you unlock all these insights about where customers go. That helps you find them with your digital media and gives you an idea of the advertising job to be done to drive them to your store instead.

When

Your market research data also gives you insights about when customers buy. For example, time of day for regular purchases, or time of year for more irregular purchases.

This helps you time your activity to when customers are going to be most receptive to it. When you place your media, for example. But also what that media says to make it more relevant to the buying occasion. For example, a reference to Easter or Christmas if that’s when the purchase is most likely to take place.

Why

The final 5W question is usually the one which offers the biggest impact on e-Commerce growth, but is also the hardest to answer.

Why customers do what they do gives you insights you can use across all parts of your marketing mix. Answers to why help you create more relevant products and services, more attractive price points, more appealing online stores and clearer, more impactful communications.

These can be basic needs met by online shopping such as ease and convenience, range or price. (See our what do online shoppers want article for more on these).

But the research can also help you go deeper. You can find insights by pulling in ideas from related areas like behavioural science and design psychology, for example. In e-Commerce, it’s relatively easy to test, so you can work out which ideas help improve the customer’s shopping experience.

The mix of questions from these 5Ws of e-Commerce market research then drives your research brief and methodology. The research answers you get shape how you develop your brand and create your customer experience.

How to get more sales online - Brand development

It’s likely your market research will show that not all online shoppers are the same.

There’ll be different groups or segments who share similar attributes. These segments will be different sizes and require different marketing approaches.

So, it’s important you research these segments, and identify which are the most attractive to target. This helps you create a clear e-Commerce positioning to help you stand out with online customers.

It’s the same segmentation, targeting and positioning approach used to develop any brand, but given a specific goal of working out how to get more sales online.

Segmentation

Customers in online shopping segments will differ from shoppers in traditional channels.

For example, the demographic splits are often different. You may have younger shoppers who’ve grown up with online shopping, and are more comfortable with the technology. Or you may have older shoppers who are less mobile, and find it harder to go out. They might shop online for the added convenience of not going to a store.

Shopping occasions and times can also vary online. You might have shift workers, or parents with newborn children, who can’t get to traditional stores during the day. Online shopping lets them shop at times which suit them.

You often also find customers who buy in bulk on behalf of others. For example, tea and coffee supplies for offices and businesses. Or other areas where groups come together. We know of one category where prisons, hospitals and day care centres are the biggest online shopping segment, for example. These online shoppers value the convenience of having large quantities delivered.

Targeting

Once you identify segments, you then need to identify which have the highest potential, using a market attractiveness model approach.

You rank segments based on the variables you discovered during the market research process.

For example, how much people spend online, and how often they buy would be factors in working out how to get more sales online.

You’d also want to consider the competitors in each segment. If online shoppers are happy with other sellers, it’ll be harder to get them to change their behaviour.

Your e-Commerce targeting decisions also depend on whether you use online retailers, you set up your own store, or both.

Because online shopping generates lots of data, online retailers may already have their own segments they can share with you, based on e.g. :-

past online shopping behaviour – heavy, medium or light users.
where people live – specific cities or regions.
what time of day they shop – early morning or late evening shoppers.

With your own online store website, you have direct access to all this sort of data. You use this to work out the best target segments. Which then generates new data, and helps you further refine your target audience.

Positioning

You finish off by crafting your positioning statement. This summarises who you brand is for, what it offers and its key point of difference versus competitors. Specifically, it spells out :-

your target audience.
the benefit you offer.
your frame of reference, which in the case of online shopping, includes the context of it being sold online.
your reason why and reason to believe.

This can take you into some of the e-Commerce benefits mentioned previously, like ease and convenience, range and price. But it can go beyond those. For example, the frame of reference could also cover service offers like speed of delivery, or customisation of the product.

The positioning statement helps you define both your competitive strategy and your competitive advantage which lead you towards building your brand identity.

Brand identity

Your brand identity combines tangible and intangible assets to define what your brand thinks, feels and does.

It helps your brand stay clear and consistent in what it looks and sounds like.

Brand identity helps customers understand who you are, and makes it easier to connect with them.

When it comes to how to get more sales online, it’s important to flex your brand identity so it fits the context of online sales.

Do your essence, values and personality support your e-Commerce goals in your advertising, packaging and product pages, for example?

You can use a framework like the brand identity wheel to map out all your brand assets. Then check they’re all a good fit with selling online.

Does the fact you’re selling online change any of what the shopper might answer on “how it makes me feel” or “what it says about me”, for example?

Fitting your brand identity to what the online shopper is looking for helps build trust and credibility. These remove barriers to online selling that might otherwise stop the customer deciding to shop with you.

Which obviously increases your chances of getting a sale.

Marketing plan

Finally, you bring this all together in your marketing plan.

This should cover the different parts of the marketing mix such as product, price, promotion, place, people, process, and physical location.

These drive what you do, how you do it and when you do it. For example, it’ll spell out all your plans for advertising, digital media and online sales promotions.

Read our e-Commerce planning process guide for more on how e-Commerce connects to marketing planning. See also our marketing mix example article for a case study which applies the marketing mix to an online business.

How to get more sales online - Customer Experience

Though you can include customer experience as part of a broader marketing strategy, it has such an impact on e-Commerce, you should consider it in its own right.

It’s an important process to identify how to get more sales online. It’s what drives most e-Commerce growth.

Customer experience (CX) development combines marketing and technology into an approach which aims to improve every interaction the customer has with your brand.

It aims to find and fix key pain points in the customer journey. This is the different interactions customers have with the brand. These improvements make it more likely customers will buy, and keep coming back for more.

Personas

The CX approach uses a number of processes, tools and software systems.

You can use these in conjunction with the marketing skills outlined above, to help bring the target and plan to life.

For example, customer personas help visualise your target audience. That’s helpful when writing briefs, for example.

You can show the type of person you’re talking about, and what they think, feel and do.

It means key activities like advertising, copywriting and sales promotions will feel more relevant to the customer.

Customer Journey Map

The customer journey map helps you identify key touchpoints where the shopper interacts with your brand.

For example, you can identify specific digital media channels to spark their interest or encourage them to find out more. You can identify key parts of the store website to persuade them or make it easy to buy.

The map helps identify ‘pain points’ for the shopper at each stage, and shows you what solutions you need to deliver.

The key solution areas generally come from digital media, your shop website, payment and delivery, and the customer service you offer.

Digital media

Clearly a big part of how to get more sales online is letting shoppers know your product page exists, and persuading them to visit it.

Communication activities like advertising and public relations can help you drive awareness. You highlight what your store can do for customers.

But in e-Commerce, you normally prioritise digital media channels like search, social and display advertising.

These nudge shoppers into visiting your pages by making it easy. You show the answer to their problem is just a click away. That click takes them to your shop website.

Shop website - product pages

Optimising your product page is a key driver of how to get more sales online. After all, it’s where the actual sale takes place. As part of the customer experience journey, it’s where the shopper makes the decision to buy. Or, not.

And actually, it’s usually “not buy”. As per our D2C business model article, the average page conversation rate (the percentage of visitors who buy) is only around 2%. That means 98% of visitors don’t buy. So, you need your media to drive lots of visitors. And, you need to do everything you can to push up that 2% conversion rate.

But, the good news is there are things you can do. There are some well-known e-Commerce product page principles you can apply to improve conversions. These apply whether you have you own store website, or you manage your product pages via a retailer’s product information management system.

Product pages - basics

At the simplest level, there’s 3 basic elements for every product page. The product name. Product images. And product information. They’re the bare bones of the page.

Product pages will clearly contain more than that, and there’s lot of examples of content you can include. But, you must start with getting these 3 basics right.

Product name

Your product name has to be clear, consistent and easy for online shoppers to find. This might seem obvious. But, the product name has to be able to identify each specific variation of a product. And, that can get more complicated.

So, your product name will likely have a couple of different elements to help specify exactly what the product is. You’ll have an overall brand name e.g. Coca-Cola. Then a sub-brand name e.g. Classic or Diet Coke. And then, a more specific product identifier e.g. 36 x 375ml cans multipack. (See our product page and e-Commerce content ideas for more examples of product naming in action).

Product Images

Online shopping in many categories is driven by visual appeal of the design of the product. So, you want to make sure your product photography is appealing enough to drives sales.

But even before that, you have to make sure it’s accurate and up-to-date.

If a customer orders a product based on an old or misleading image, they’ll be disappointed if something different arrives.

This can lead to complaints and requests for refunds. And, possibly even legal action.

Obviously, not a good thing.

Product image checks

As part of your photography evaluation, you should think about how your product photos are lit and what the background and context will look like.

In low involvement, functional categories where the product’s the “hero”, you’ll want simple backgrounds to avoid distracting the customer’s attention.

But in high involvement, emotional categories, lifestyle shots can create more impact. These show the product in action, either with models, or with props to show them off.

You should also make sure the image is a high enough resolution and quality.

For example, if the site allows the shopper to zoom in on the product image, it must stay sharp and legible. However, the file size can’t be too large, or it’ll slow down the page. Most sites set out their optimum file size and image dimensions.

It’s usually also worth showing the product from multiple angles. Front, back, top and sides, for example. It can also help to share a 3D as well as 2D views of the product.

You should also consider how many product images to show. Online retailers normally limit how many images you can show. But if it’s your own store, you choose how many and which products to show. Try to find a good balance. You want enough to make an impression, but not so many it overwhelms the shopper. Around seven images plus or minus two is usually about right.

Supplying and managing product imagery

You also need to plan how you’ll supply and manage the product imagery. This might be as simple as emailing them to the retailer. But, as we per our product information management systems article, you often manage images through online spreadsheets, or third parties like skuvantage.

And finally, it’s also worth checking what your packaging looks like on screen. If you developed your packaging to stand out on shelf in a physical store, that doesn’t mean it’ll still work in digital formats. This check should be part of your packaging development process.

Product information

The final product page basic is all the relevant product information. This usually mirrors the packaging.

It’ll be a mix of mandatory information, like allergy information on food products, plus your key selling messages. These selling messages should follow good sales copy principles, sharing key features and benefits to help persuade customers to buy.

You should also check spelling and grammar to make sure there are no mistakes. These look unprofessional and can hit sales. They need to be fixed quickly when you spot them, usually by updating the retailer’s product information management system or your store website if you sell D2C.

In addition, you also need the product information content to be search friendly. Make sure you apply key SEO writing principles. For example, doing keyword research before you write. And setting up your metadata and headlines to make the page search friendly.

Once you’ve sorted these basics, then you start to look at what else you can do. There’s more you can do with your product page to help solve the challenge of how to get more sales online.

Product page checklist

As you can see, with our detailed product page checklist, there are a number of other areas to consider after the name, images and basic information.

Let’s look at each of these in turn, and review what’s possible to improve the sales performance of your product page. (see also our e-Commerce product page content ideas articles for more real-life examples).

Price

Obviously, price is one factor that influences whether the online shopper’s decision to buy. So, you need to make sure the price is easy to find on the product page. And, on any navigation pages.

On product pages, the price normally appears near the product name, and the call to action button. On navigation pages, it’s usual to find it below the product image.

Price works at 2 levels.

First, at a marketing level, it’s part of the overall marketing mix, as per our marketing plan guide. It reinforces the positioning as price often reflects whether your product is high quality, or more mainstream.

Then, at a sales level, you can add promotional price discounts as per our sales promotions guide. These can help persuade customers they’re getting a good deal at the price. Or that they’ll miss out on the deal if they don’t buy.

When used online, you should also consider how you present the price. There’s evidence that smaller fonts make customers perceive price as less than bigger fonts for example. And you can use the principles of psychological pricing to, for example, decide whether to include decimal points or round the price up to the nearest dollar.

Call to action

You also want to make sure the call to action button is clear and captures attention.

The “call to action” is what you want the online shopper to do next.

It’s common to play around with colour and typography on the call to action button to make it stand out and be easy to recognise. It should have a clear action such as “Buy now” or “Add to cart” to make it obvious, what you want the online shopper to do next.

So, in our example above, we add a green background to the “Buy Product” box to make it stand out more. Our normal Call to Action buttons are white font, on a red background.

This is the only time on our site we use a different button colour scheme. It helps to show that it’s a different action from just visiting another page.

While “Buy now” is your obvious call to action at the point of purchase, you can also build in other calls to action at different points of the online shopper experience.

For technical or detailed products, the call to action might be to book a consultation or a call-back, for example. After the shopper buys the product, the call to action could ask them to comment, or leave a review of their experience.

Customer reviews from real shoppers are a great sales and marketing tool. They feel independent and unbiased to other customers.

So, they do a double job. They help you track how happy your customers are. And, they persuade other customers that you offer a good online shopping experience.

Even if you only ask customers for feedback and don’t publish it, giving customers the opportunity to tell you how you have done builds trust and confidence in your brand.

Category filters

Each product page needs to fit into the overall navigation hierarchy of the site. This is done with the URL set up of each page. A filter usually defines a group of products and each product page within that group becomes an extension of the filter page URL.

Think about these filters as the digital equivalent of aisles in an actual store. They group similar products together so that they are all in one place. It makes it easier for the online shopper to compare similar products. You normally find these filters in the navigation bar. They are also used to create the URL naming structure of pages within the site.

So for example, let’s say hypothetically, we were selling this T-shirt design on amazon.com.

To make it easier to find this product, we’d adjust the category filters. And these filters would then help to build the URL for the design. So, for example the filters might be T-shirts, then men’s T-shirts and then our product name.

So, the URLs would build like this …

Category : amazon.com/tshirts

Sub-category : amazon.com/tshirts/mentshirts

Product URL : amazon.com/tshirts/mentshirts/ threebrainsnumberonetshirt

The owner of the online store website usually decides on this hierarchy of the navigation. They should do this based on market research with consumers to see how they navigate the site and find products.

It is the type of site functionality which you can test and evolve over time. The navigation hierarchy also helps with search functionality. It makes it more obvious to search engines what the product page is about.

Search

Which brings us on to the next check on the product page.

Though shoppers can find their way to the page using the category filters, they may also search on the product directly. They can do this on Google. Or, they can use the internal search function that normally comes with e-Commerce sites.

If you’ve written your sales copy to include the product name and product description using the principles of SEO writing, then your product should appear when shoppers search for it.

If the product doesn’t appear, you should review your SEO approach and diagnose if there are any issues.

It may be that Google for example takes some time to index the page, and it appears a few days after you publish it.

But every time a shopper searches and the page doesn’t appear, you potentially lose a sale. So, it’s an important part of your product page to test.

You also want to consider what to do on paid search if online retailers are bidding on the same search terms as you. This can push the price of paid search up. So, you would want to review your digital media strategy to make sure that search enquiries go to the right place.

Search queries to learn more about the brand for example, you want to push to your brand website. But search queries where “buy” in included in the search query, really need to go to a shopping site, either an online retailer or your own store.

Responsive

The final check on your product page is to see how it appears on different devices. How does it appear on desktop, tablet and mobile phones? Most websites are now set up to be “responsive”, which means they adapt their display to the device being used.

This can affect the orientation of images (portrait and landscape), the size of fonts and buttons and even how much information is displayed. Mobile formats for example usually need bigger images and buttons and have less room for long copy.

In the example video from our shop when you view the page in portrait on a mobile phone, you can see text and images “fit” the screen. Even though the space is very different from a wide screen as seen on a desktop.

But when you tilt the phone and look at the same content in landscape mode, everything readjusts to fit the screen size.

Most shoppers wouldn’t even notice that this happens.

But if you HAVEN’T set up the site to be responsive, they certainly will notice. Images and text might float off the screen, or look really tight and cramped. These can reduce the trust that the shopper feels in the online shop, and so reduce the chances of a sale.

Payment, delivery and customer service

Your level of involvement in the payment, delivery and customer service depends on whether you manage your own online store, or you sell through online retailers.

When you manage your own store, this part of the customer experience is normally called Order to Delivery. See our separate guide for more on this.

So, how to set up payments so they go securely from the customer to your bank. How to manage storage, and the physical transportation of the products.

And some of the typical customer service scenarios like lost orders, damaged orders and claims for refunds.

From a customer experience point of view, you need to test each of these systems as though you were an actual customer. Look at how to make it as easy as possible for the shopper.

Friction points

Ideally, once the customer places an order, they shouldn’t actively need to do anything else until the product arrives.

Any time the customer has to do something, this creates a friction point. Part of your online store testing is to make sure minimise the number of these friction points.

You can do this by keeping the customer informed of the progress of the order, for example. Automated messages to show the order’s been received, processed and dispatched help reassure the shopper their product is on the way.

Tracking links from the courier help customers physically track the location of the product.

Anything that lets them know when their product will be delivered helps to remove these potential friction points. The less friction points the smoother the experience. You may well need extra IT skills to help you set up these messages, and links.

You also want to consider how to remove friction points that can affect your business. So, customers who receive a package and claim it wasn’t delivered, for example. Most delivery companies will now get a signature when they deliver an item. Or they’ll take a photo of the delivery, if the shopper has given “permission to leave” the product.

Having clear FAQ sections and contact details helps boost the confidence of the shopper in your e-Commerce system. After all, they have already paid the money for the goods.

They depend on the efficiency of your order to delivery process to get the product to them quickly and in one piece.

Follow-up contacts to make sure the customer is happy, or to make complementary offers or share ideas can help build longer-term goodwill and drive repeat purchases. Set up your CRM systems to help with this.

Repeat business from loyal customers is where e-Commerce businesses get a solid base of sales.

Advanced e-Commerce techniques

This checklist of ideas ensures you create a better customer experience for online shoppers. The better the experience, the more you sell online.

Do the research to understand customer needs. Build a relevant and appealing brand identity. Set up an efficient order to delivery system and great customer service.

For further ideas on how to improve your customer experience to drive even more sales, check out our article on advanced e-Commerce techniques.

This article shows you how to do more advanced online selling like online exclusives, subscription models and offering online services.

Final thoughts on customer experience in e-Commerce

We’ve identified many of the common touchpoints to persuade and convert online shoppers to buy your products.

But how you best bring that to life at each stage, means you also need to build this into your marketing plans.

And then that plan needs to be put into action.

The needs you uncover with market research, and your brand identity need to come together at each touchpoint.

They need to give a consistent experience that builds confidence in the online shopper. You want them to feel connected to your brand and how it is sold online.

It’s important to review and optimise each stage. This can feel like an overly detailed part of the process. But, often small improvements can drive large changes in behaviour. And this will have a positive uplift in online sales.

You want to remove any potential barrier or reason to not buy. Ideally, try to make it so it’s actually easier to buy online than not. Using a customer experience approach is an important habit to get into, when you’re trying to work how to get more sales online

Conclusion - How to get more sales online

We hope this guide has given you ideas and inspiration on how to get more sales online.

If there was a guaranteed way to drive e-Commerce growth, everyone would be doing it.

But by applying and learning key market research, brand development and customer experience skills as we’ve outlined here, you can improve your chances of being a successful online seller enormously.

E-Commerce as a channel is relatively easy to get into, but relatively hard to do well.

That’s part of the fun and challenge.

You need to weave together multiple skills and balance out the creativity needed to create products and experience that sell, with the more logical and practical processes and systems that make online selling run smoothly.

That’s how you build the skills and learn how to get more sales online.

It’s part of an overall customer-centric and digital way of doing business, that we’ve tested and learned and use as part of our own business on a day-to-day basis.

Three-Brains and e-Commerce

We’ve worked on many e-Commerce projects and have good experience across e-Commerce planning, working with online retailers and building online store websites. We know how to connect these expertise areas back into driving your brand marketing and growing your sales.

Drop us a line if you want to know more about how we can support your e-Commerce to grow your business with our coaching and consulting services.

How to get more sales online

How to get more sales online

Ready to test your knowledge?

How to get more sales online - Market research

Who

What

Where

When

Why

How to get more sales online - Brand development

Segmentation

Targeting

Positioning

Brand identity

Marketing plan

How to get more sales online - Customer Experience

Personas

Customer Journey Map

Digital media

Shop website - product pages

Product pages - basics

Product name

Product Images

Product image checks

Supplying and managing product imagery

Product information

Product page checklist

Price

Call to action

Category filters

Search

Responsive

Payment, delivery and customer service

Friction points

Advanced e-Commerce techniques

Final thoughts on customer experience in e-Commerce

Conclusion - How to get more sales online

Three-Brains and e-Commerce

Read more articles on e-Commerce

Latest e-Commerce blog posts

How to manage online store pricing

Be prepared for D2C order processing before you launch

Reviewing product page examples for e-Commerce content ideas