Constructive E-Commerce Strategies: Here’s What You Need To Know About Boosting Online Sales

Being one of the few sectors that emerged stronger from the COVID-19 pandemic, India’s e-commerce industry has come a long way in the past year. According to IBEF’s report, India’s e-commerce market has been projected to reach USD 200 billion by 2026. With the pandemic propelling usage of the internet across the country, these numbers may well be higher in 5 years. This rapid growth can be attributed to several factors, particularly, constructive strategies.

For an e-commerce platform, brand store, performance marketing, marketplace management, and warehouse operations should be some of the primary focus areas to improve sales as these can make or break a business by impacting the customer experience. That said, here are some constructive e-commerce strategies that can help in boosting online sales.

Integration and loyalty programs

For any business, the customer is the king. Customers naturally prefer a seamless shopping experience and to facilitate that, integration is necessary – both payment integration as well as the integration of offline inventory to the online platform. Integration of offline inventory to sell online will provide a better depth and width of inventory and payment integration will further facilitate a frictionless shopping experience.

Apart from this, it would also bode well for e-commerce platforms to focus more on loyalty programs, e-gift cards, and engaging customers with reward points, giveaways, and contests. E-commerce platforms can even integrate online assistance/recommendations and virtual trial rooms to improvise the shopping experience. These will elevate the platform’s position and popularity, thereby improving customer acquisition, retention, and satisfaction.

Optimization for an enhanced shopping experience

When it comes to online shopping, factors such as website design and content, product images, checkout options, etc., play a vital role in determining if a customer will go through with their purchase. Ensuring optimum quality product images, optimizing website content, and enabling single page checkouts will go a long way in enhancing the customer’s overall shopping experience. For brand stores, including chatbots to improve customer support service and including customer ratings and reviews on the website will help augment customer experience.

Leveraging technology for performance marketing

Technology has evolved immensely presenting e-commerce platforms with a plethora of opportunities to boost sales. Moreover, social commerce has gained immense traction in recent years with more and more customers opting to shop through social media platforms. E-commerce sellers and platforms can utilize Google’s smart shopping campaign to re-target your potential buyers on social media platforms and can also indulge in re-marketing to engage customers who’ve abandoned the items in their cart. Showcasing your products with catalog-linked ads and using the call-to-action (CTA) button on website blogs to redirect visitors to product pages will also significantly contribute to boosting online sales.

Furthermore, influencer marketing is another strategy that e-commerce businesses can leverage to reach wider audiences along with community outreach campaigns and sending e-mail newsletters to the target audiences with persuasive content marketing strategies. With social commerce becoming the go-to solution for e-commerce players, integrating WhatsApp and social commerce as an additional online sub-channel can assist in expanding the customer base and enhancing convenience.

Efficient marketplace management and warehouse operations

Besides the aforementioned, it is crucial for e-commerce players to ensure that marketplace management and warehouse operations are extremely efficient and convenient for both customers and businesses. Offering free shipping on certain occasions, timely responses to customer queries on various marketplaces, and optimizing the content on marketplaces to support voice-based searches are some key strategies for e-commerce players to ensure frictionless shopping experiences for customers.

When considering warehouse operations, splitting inventory into 2 or more warehouses, tagging inventory with accurate labels, availing insurance for all inventory, and installing security measures such as CCTV cameras will safeguard inventory and ensure smooth warehouse operations.

In a nutshell, augmenting your business model and operations to be more customer-centric is key to boosting online sales. While increasing orders on e-commerce stores is a gradual process that won’t happen overnight, constant customer engagement, leveraging technology, and improvising marketing and operations will pave the way for an e-commerce business to achieve success.