14 Sure-fire Strategies to Increase Online Sales for Any Business

Launch Your Online Business in Just 7 Days

Do you want to increase your sales online without spending extra on paid ads?


To help your business become less reliant on ads, we’ll show you exactly how to increase your online traffic, decrease your bounce rate, and drive more sales to your business.


Not only will you learn new ways to improve your overall conversion rate, but we’ll also show you the perfect platform to help you get started.


Ready? Let’s begin.

1. Understand your ideal customer

Source: Captainverify.com

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional portrayal of your ideal customer.


Knowing who your potential customers are will help you:

  • Focus your time on qualified leads
  • Guide product development

To better understand the buyer persona of your business, look no further than your existing customers — who keeps coming back for more?


Conduct surveys, hand out forms, share polls, and talk to your clients as much as you can.


Figure out their age demographic, level of education, spending habits, desires, dreams, what content they consume, fears, motives, and every possible characteristic you can find.


If you don’t have a client base already, just analyze your competition.


Their online reviews are a goldmine for understanding users, their expectations, and gathering data.


Go on the hunt for reviews at Amazon, social media, Trustpilot, G2, Capterra, and their own, personal websites.


Push yourself to create buyer personas. Your buyer persona must reflect one person.


After building your ideal customer profile, it’s time to start looking into reaching a wider audience that exactly matches your customer profile.

2. Refine your sales copy

Source: Neilpatel.com

Now that you have built your ideal customer profile, you want to tailor your sales copy to match their traits and motives.


This is key to reaching a wider audience that is looking for your products or services.


For a general rule of thumb, use the AIDA formula when writing your copy, it stands for:

  • Awareness/Attention

Arguably the most important step — if you can’t catch their attention from the get-go, there’s no way you’re going to get any action. You want them to wonder about your brand, the solutions you provide. The title on your landing page is a centerpiece for this.


Example:


The Most Advanced AI-Powered Tools For SEO Analysis


or


The 20 Best Watches for Men to Buy in 2023

  • Interest

Now that you have their attention, you need to keep/grow their interest and address their pain points. Your value proposition should show the awesome benefits of your product/service and how much of a good fit it is for them.


For example:


Our blazing fast domain checker and AI-powered tool gets you results 5x faster than the competition. Discover domain investing potential today.

  • Desire

This step follows garnering interest closely, as it capitalizes on users now being invested in what you have to say.


This is perfect for building an emotional connection to your product/service.


Most purchases are made based on emotions and then justified by logic.


Capitalize on that by following one of these methods:

1. Tell genuine stories — Nike does a great job at telling stories
2. Video marketing — Put your face and name behind your business
3. Communicate with customers — Customer support drives online sales, more on that later
4. Know how your product/service solve a specific problem for your target audience and focus on that

  • Action

This is your chance, if they reach this step, it’s time to slip in your call to action (CTA).


Your unique selling point (USP) shines here and should resemble the benefit new customers will get out of this.


A USP comes right before the CTA which is usually a button. For example:

1. Never compromise on your health, take hold of your new diet. Download Now

2. Get your detailed weekly list of the best recipes of homemade food
Subscribe

3. Team up with the best. Wear the best.
Order or Shop

It’s important to use strong verbs that directly channel the reader into the action you want.


Check out these 21 sales pages examples to get inspiration for refining your copy.

3. Change your pricing system

Change your pricing system

It’s a common mistake to have a one-price-fits-all pricing system.


Marking up costs can also be tricky. To combat this, your pricing page should look sharp.


Consider this:

  • Introduce tier-based systems

Tier-based systems help increase the perceived value for versions of the same product or plan.


They work because most of the time they cover the whole spectrum of your customers’ budget.

  • Don’t discount new products

Discounting new products may have a negative effect in the sense that it takes away from the value of your product or service.


Plus, users may not be ready for the price change after the discount ends and the product/service starts selling for its original price — pushing them into trying other products or platforms.

  • Consider psychological pricing

Psychological pricing is as old as marketing gets, and it still works.


You take a few cents from the price to not make it a whole number, we’re sure that you have seen it many times.


Buying an espresso that’s $5.95? Yes. Buying the same one for $6? No, that's too much!

  • Look at the competition

Your job is to make sure the price echoes your value proposition or USP while being competitive in the market.


It’s a fine line between staying relevant and being dragged into a price war that no one wins but the customer asking for the cheapest price possible.

  • Have regular offers and bundles

But you want to do it sensibly.


If you run a business that relies on memberships, then a discount for signing up is great because it wins you a customer that will keep paying you — if you can retain them.


If you have a cohesive line of products, you can create bundle packages at a discounted price.

  • Never include hidden fees

Online shoppers should know exactly how much they’re paying before filling in their details.


An unwelcomed surprise in a form of taxes, shipping, or any other fees would make potential customers shy away from purchasing from you.


Always make the process transparent in the summary preview to include everything the customer is paying for in the checkout process.

4. Build social proof

Social proof is how much social influence you have in your area ― the more it is validated by other known or unknown influencers in the space, the more trust you get.


For online businesses, this means having excellent social proof is important to increase conversions, so get ready to put your name and face behind your business.


But how exactly do you build your social proof?

4.1. Get expert reviews

Inviting industry experts to try out your product or service is a great way to win the trust of potential customers.


Their reviews can be proudly displayed on your social media and the landing page.


People usually associate a positive review of a product from an expert with that product being safe and a good purchase decision.

4.2. Make it easy to submit reviews

Systeme.io Testimonials

systeme.io testimonial

Users of your platform should find it as easy as possible to submit a review for your product or service.


As soon as you can, create a streamlined review submitting process that takes care of continually asking satisfied customers.


For example, our team at systeme.io actively looks for reviews by:

  • Reaching out to users in social media groups
  • Gathering reviews from trusted reviews sites like Trustpilot
  • Reaching out asking for feedback from users via email after dealing with queries
  • Reaching out asking for feedback in users' DMs through social networks

Make it as personalized as possible, and explain to them why their review/feedback is so important.


If you have a larger client base with a lot of traffic coming in, you can also create polls and surveys that award small prizes.

4.3. Engage your community

Being constantly active on social media and your own website with your community is an undeniable way to build trust.


But you don’t want to use resources to engage with useless arguments, so here’s what you should focus on:

  • Educational posts/videos of how to use your products and services
  • Certificates and milestones
  • Success stories of clients
  • Sharing high-quality product images

You can also build social proof by working with influencers, but we’ll get to that later.

5. Optimize landing pages for better conversions

A landing page is like your storefront — it’s the first thing your prospects see and an essential part of driving online sales to your business.


We’ve already covered how to integrate a great copy that sells, but the optimization doesn’t stop there.

5.1. Use visual reporters

Source: Justinmind.com

You can start with implementing a heat map — it will allow you to collect data on users' behavior and other metrics. Check out our HotJar review to learn more.


This will allow you to determine how users act on your website, what sections they spend the most time on, and where most users click.


You can also implement video recordings of users to see their movements when navigating your website.


Want to know how to increase online sales with this newfound data?


You start with analyzing everything, see what works and what doesn’t — the goal is to keep customers as long as possible.


Make sure to track how sign-ups happen, where and how users react to different offers, and how your action-based alerts are performing.


These will allow you to work on:

  • Refining the UX (user experience) design on both mobile and desktop
  • A customer-focused buying process
  • Testing multiple landing pages to see what works best

This directly results in a better customer experience.

5.2. Consider pop-ups

Adding pop-ups with systeme.io

Adding pop-ups with systeme.io

Pop-ups can be very effective in tipping up your conversion rates, but they are a double-edged blade.


90% of the time pop-ups are annoying because they’re used wrong, you don’t want to look pushy or desperate.


Entrance and exit intent pop-ups could work very well in online stores and product pages.


Make sure to not have both on the same page, give them a clear tone, superb design, and make an irresistible offer.


This paired with the previous step enables you to start testing multiple pop-ups on different product pages and walk the fine line of how much your customers will tolerate.


Never push it too far, as it can cause really bad UX.

6. Start upselling and cross-selling

Upselling is the act of encouraging customers to purchase add-ons to the product or service they are already planning on buying — and in some cases purchase a higher-end product.


Cross-selling is the act of recommending customers to purchase complementary products that often go well with the product they’re buying.


Using these tactics is important because it:

  • Offers convenience for customers
  • Increases customer loyalty
  • Increases overall increase in revenue and profits

So both upselling and cross-selling are no-brainers to increase sales.


Here’s a guide on how to choose between upselling and cross-selling for your online store.

7. Upgrade your checkout and shipping opportunities

Most poor conversion rates are due to painful checkout processes, which result in cart abandonment.


Optimizing your checkout pages whilst having a clear shipping process is no easy feat but it’s crucial if you want to increase online sales fast.


Here’s how you can dominate this area:

7.1. Make your CTAs stand out

Source: Amazon.com

Source: Amazon.com

Part of visual guidance around your checkout page is making sure your CTAs are vivid and clear.


This means having them in different colors compared to the rest of the page.


It also means adding multiple checkout buttons in the right positions and making sure to have a "Buy Now" button.


If a customer wants to make the transaction right away, why stop them?

7.2. Offer guest checkout

Source: Apple.com

Source: Apple.com

Guest checkout is a leading factor for increasing shopping cart conversion rates — it makes the checkout process as frictionless as possible.


A lot of customers might see the value in your product/service but are looking for a one-time purchase.


Make the process straightforward — this alone should increase your online sales.


We know that you’re looking for as many sign-ups as possible, so this is a perfect place to include a 5-10% discount on their order just for signing up.

7.3. Allow customers to edit carts easily

Source: CheckoutWC.com

Give customers the option to remove products without a hassle.


This also means you subtly cross-sell them with bundles and other matching products for a nice discount.


After implementing this, users will have a smooth checkout process that you can be proud of.

7.4. Add wishlists

Source: Weltpixel.com

Wishlists are amazing simply because they allow customers to bookmark certain items and products.


This is perfect for users who don’t currently have the budget or are on the go just browsing stuff.


It’s a great opportunity for you to jump on as it will allow you to offer said items for discounted prices or bundles that are captivating.

7.5. Add guarantees

Whenever possible, add trust icons — these provide a sense of safety for users.


It tells them that their personal information and credit card details are safe.


You can also offer a money-back guarantee which provides minimal risk for you and increases your audiences’ trust in your brand.

7.6. Optimize for a mobile-friendly experience

Optimize for a mobile-friendly experience

Mobile usage has grown immensely in the last few years to the point where almost everyone is comfortable with the thought of making a purchase on their mobile device.


If your checkout process isn’t optimized for that, you’re losing so many customers and you don’t even know it.


You want to have the mobile experience in alignment with the desktop version.


It should have the same tone and feel, but consider the differences in form factors.


This alone could make or break your ecommerce sales.

7.7. Offer multiple payment options

It goes without saying that customers like having more options.


Especially when it comes to transferring money to your pocket, having their favorite payment method is a nice plus.


This will help you:

  • Maximize conversions
  • Reach a bigger audience
  • Gather more data on your customers
  • Minimize cart abandonment

This also contributes to providing an optimal experience all around, increasing sales as you grow and have more eyes set on your business.

7.8. Offer free shipping

Offering free shipping is the number one method in fighting cart abandonment.


Of course, it may not always make financial sense to you to offer free shipping in your sales process.


You can combat this by offering it on bundles or high-ticket purchases.


Free shipping increases the perceived value that the user is getting so it increases online sales.

7.9. Split test everything (A/B testing)

Split testing is experimenting with two different designs that have all the other variables fixed.


This should uncover what layout works and what doesn’t, where your relevant traffic converts more, and how breezy you can make the checkout process for customers.


There are lots of benefits to implementing this, like:

  • Providing you with an easy analysis
  • Increasing conversion rates — And decreasing bounce rates as well
  • Reducing risk for future product launches
  • Improving your content quality
  • Quickly figuring out pain points
  • Improving overall ROI

You can use A/B testing in product launches, as well as in a lot of the upcoming sections.


Shoot for testing one variable at a time with different versions of the same thing.


Go with what achieves the goals you want.

8. Start content marketing

Content marketing is a marketing approach designed to draw and retain a characterized audience by sharing consistent content that is relevant, valuable, and helpful.


Here’s what content marketing will do for you:

  • Improve your business rankings on search engines
  • Create trust and develop relationships with clients
  • Generate more brand awareness
  • Boost online sales

Your buyer personas come once again at play here, the content you share should be targeted towards potential leads.


Often, SEO and content marketing are mentioned in the same discussion because your content marketing strategy directly affects SEO results.


Here’s exactly what you should do to build an outstanding content strategy:

8.1. Market research is key

Market research is key

In the content creation phase, doing extensive research about the topics you’re going to write about can’t be overstated.


Different types of content require different approaches when writing and gathering info.


You’re going to mainly create content of one of these types:

  • Growing awareness of your brand

Focus on getting traffic, views, and shares by raising cognition about the problem you’re solving.


You need to build up a reputation for your products or services.


You want to grab their attention.

  • Lead generation

This content is geared towards nurturing traffic to becoming significantly interested in the benefits of your product or services


You want them to like you.


Keep an eye out for your bounce and click-through rates for this one.

  • Sales content

With sales content, you want to show off your products and services against other alternatives.


Show potential customers your value proposition with clear benefits that they’re going to get from this.


You want them to feel the need for your product/service and how they’re missing out.


Monitor your click-through and conversion metrics.

  • Customer loyalty content

Customer loyalty is one of the best things a business can enjoy, and you should go after it.


Provide easy-to-read user manuals, constructive, and detailed “how-to” content.


Each type of content requires you to go in the trenches of finding details, metrics, stats, and valuable info for your readers.


Of course, you want to show a clear understanding of who you’re writing to and what problems you’re solving.

8.2. Adapt to your platforms

You absolutely need to master re-purposing content. Using the same piece of content to publish a lot of smaller pieces that fit social media platforms is the secret to growing a huge audience.


Publishing on different platforms means you need to adjust your content for the respective audience of that platform.


For example, Twitter is perfect for sharing short burst data, facts, or hot takes — this means you can tweet about exciting stats, research results, and new findings to get attention to your last published blog.


Facebook is a pay-to-show-yourself platform, it relies on paid social campaigns for building brand awareness, and videos work extremely well with this formula — use them to drive traffic to your sales funnels.


Reddit is . . . Reddit.


It’s great for building a passionate community around a technical product or a game — use it to share development milestones and create loyal clients.


If done right, publishing content on each platform has the power to increase online sales.

8.3. Streamline your publishing process

Now that you’ve figured out what content you’re going to publish, it’s time to set a specific publishing process.


Start by asking yourself these questions:

1. Who’s writing the content? — Is it you or your sales team?

2. How often are you going to publish content?

3. Which of/how are your social media accounts going to keep up with published content?

4. What tools are you going to need to publish on time?

After answering these questions, schedule your editorial calendar. You can use tools like Notion, Trello, Calendly, and Google Calendar to do that.


You must have a clear, timely mannered roadmap for generating topics, doing research, writing, and then publishing.


After mastering all the things mentioned for content marketing, your sales online will grow without question.

9. Use influencer marketing

The return on investment (ROI) for influencer marketing is around $18 for each $1 spent.


And that’s for good reason, working with influencers means:

  • Reaching a bigger target audience
  • Building brand awareness
  • Practicing A/B testing with different variants of a product
  • Growing social media accounts
  • More online sales

Working with micro-influencers is even more effective because they usually have lower costs and higher engagement with their audiences — which makes them a jackpot for small business owners.


Influencers make careers based on engagement, generating hype around topics, and their audiences trust them.


Start by reaching out to influencers that have a lot of engagement with audiences close to your buyer personas.


Give them incentives like commissions, sponsorships, and send them test samples to show and review.


Then, track metrics like how much traffic, views, shares, and conversions they have brought. You can use Google Analytics to track such metrics.

10. Start email marketing

Start email marketing

The ROI of influencer marketing is good, but email marketing’s ROI ($32-$45 per $1 spent) is really where the money is.


Yes, email marketing campaigns could bring you 42 times the amount you put in for them! Why is it so effective?


Some people prefer certain social networks over others — but everyone's got an email address.


How can it fit your marketing budget and help you get online sales at the same time?


For that to happen, you need to have a successful marketing strategy:

  • Grow your mailing list
  • Choose an email management software
  • Increase your open rate
  • Deliver amazing content
  • Test your emails
  • Monitor your email campaigns

Fortunately, we’ve put together a complete email marketing guide that will help you make the best decisions and drive more sales using this method.

11. Start affiliate marketing

Source: Quora.com

Source: Quora.com

Affiliate marketing is a practical and verified way to extend your reach and increase sales online.


It works by giving the affiliate a commission for each conversion they make while promoting a product or service.


Affiliates are like a specialized unit tasked with generating new customers and improving your conversion rate.


Hiring affiliates is a good way to increase your online sales because it’s:

  • Low risk — Only pay affiliates when they actually make a sale
  • Low overall costs — Starting and maintaining an affiliate program is cheaper than using paid ads
  • High ROI — Affiliates work with minimal monetary intervention, and all the profit coming from them is yours
  • Hyper-targeted marketing — Affiliates will directly target the buyer personas you provide them with or create and target new personas for you

But how do you make an affiliate program?


Well, you can start with:

  • Analyzing affiliate programs of the competition — It’s the easiest way to learn
  • Deciding on a spending budget
  • Setting goals for the program — In this case, you're probably looking to increase sales
  • Determining the right commissions/incentives you’re going to offer
  • Choosing software to launch and manage your affiliates

Check out these top 50 best affiliate programs to get a clear idea of what program is right for you to increase online sales.


Got your program set up? Great, now it’s time to lure in affiliates.


You can recruit affiliates in these places:

  • Affiliate networks like Clickbank and CJ Affiliates
  • Small to medium blogs
  • Freelance marketplaces like UpWork and Fiverr
  • Influencer channels
  • Your current customers

You also want them to have the best chance to succeed, so equip your affiliates with:

  • Content that represents your brand
  • Targeted sales funnels for each product line
  • Encouragement to do video marketing

Above all that, the offer that you present must be so good that they themselves want to become your brand ambassadors.


Include high recurring commissions, we usually don’t recommend going below 10% of the product/service net price.

12. Create/update sales funnels

A sales funnel is the series of steps that leads take from the moment they hear about your product or service till they end up in the checkout process


So they already exist in any online business, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t refine them.


There are 4 stages you should keep in mind when building your sales funnels:

  • The awareness stage

This stage resembles the first time potential customers recognize you, maybe through an ad or a direct Google search. Here you want to capture attention.

  • The interest stage

Here comes content marketing to the rescue! You provide leads with valuable and informative info that they care about. This stage should capture interest.

  • The decision stage

Time to bring out your best offer, they want to see it! In this stage, you pitch them your products or services.

  • The action stage

Seal up the conversion with re-targeting ads, email sequences, or gifting out a freebie. You want to make your CTAs clear, and your USP clearer.


Make sure to check out our sales funnels guide to learn how to set up a sales funnel with proven templates without the need for any technical knowledge or coding.

13. Have a killer customer support platform

Every user who is willing to check your tutorials or send an email asking about anything related to your brand is a potential customer.


And in online marketing, every potential customer counts.


These days, users just expect an online portal for customer support, you won’t increase online sales without putting customer satisfaction first.


Make sure you follow the next steps closely to perfect this area of your business:

13.1. Implement live chat

Source: Intercom.com

Source: Intercom.com

There are many benefits to having a live chat feature:

  • Reduce the number of support tickets
  • Easy troubleshooting for users
  • Gather data and info about user needs and expectations
  • It saves time for both your team and users
  • Creates personalized service experience
  • It’s low cost — It eliminates the need to hire multilingual agents

These should give you a clear idea of the importance of a live chat feature and how it leads to a great customer experience which means, you guessed it, more sales.

13.2. FAQs pages

FAQs pages

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) pages are a focal point for your customer support efforts.


Your FAQs page holds great potential because it engages your target audience with a specific piece of information they’re looking for.


Make sure to have your FAQs page in a visible or reachable place on your website.


This lets incoming traffic from a targeted ad campaign, for example, quickly analyze if your products or services make a good fit for them.


FAQs pages also take a load off your team's shoulders because agents can quickly refer users asking about common or repeated queries.


You can improve your FAQs by:

  • Keeping it well organized — Group questions into sections and have an intro for each one
  • Using actual frequently asked questions
  • Keeping answers as short and concise as possible
  • Adding CTAs throughout sections to capitalize on the traffic there
  • Including visuals when possible
  • Adding links to tutorials and guides — This is great for building internal links

Optimizing your current FAQs page to meet the above-mentioned points will surely boost your sales online.


Keep in mind that if you don’t have a live chat feature, then your FAQs page will get a lot more traffic, so having a well-thought-out design for it is key.

13.3. Responsive email and phone support

This could truly show the quality of your business and separate you from the pack.


The new standard for responsiveness to email support is very high.


Many businesses, like syteme.io, pride themselves on having an average response time of under 2 hours.


This means users can have peace of mind that should something go wrong when using a product or a service, there’s a team available 24/7 to make it right.


The same goes for phone support:

  • Have your contact form in a visible or accessible place at all times
  • Strive for being as responsive as possible
  • Respond with an adequate amount of information

14. Increase your customer’s lifetime value

Source: Medium.com

Source: Medium.com

The customer lifetime value (CLV) is a term used to describe how much money you can extract from a customer after they make a purchase.


Why is it important?

  • The 20/80 rule — 20% of your existing users account for 80% of your future profits
  • Customer retention is a lot cheaper than customer acquisition
  • Guides the development of products or features

The good news is, we have gone through a lot of tactics to increase your CLV, things like:

  • Giving customers a personalized experience with discounts and gifts
  • Providing top-notch customer support
  • Sharing success stories of your customers
  • Focusing on what they care about
  • Inviting them to join your affiliate program
  • Using upselling and cross-selling tactics

If you have an ecommerce business, this will surely boost online sales.

15. Systeme.io as an all-in-one solution

systeme.io logo

systeme.io logo

Systeme.io is an all-in-one platform that provides advanced tools for developing, launching, and scaling your online business with relative ease.


The goal is to grow sales online from one place without the need to use so many different tools.

15.1. How can systeme.io increase online sales?

With systeme.io you can access:

  • A sales funnel builder — No web design skills needed
  • Tools for email marketing — Set up email campaigns, and send unlimited emails
  • Affiliate program management tools — Manage your affiliates and payout structures
  • Website builder — If you don’t have a website already, you can have one ready in minutes

The icing on the cake is that you can accept payments via Stripe or PayPal and maximize the value of each lead using automated upsells and cross-sells to boost your online sales.


Think you can’t afford all that? Think again.

15.2. Systeme.io’s pricing

Syteme.io pricing

syteme.io's pricing

Systeme.io comes with 3 paid plans and 1 free plan, all with varying access to features.


The good news is the Free plan is more than enough for most people who are just starting and looking to increase sales.


By signing up, for any plan you’ll get to:

  • Manage your digital marketing efforts from one place
  • Build a business around your online courses
  • Launch email campaigns, your affiliate program, and drive traffic to customized sales funnels — All in a matter of a few hours!

The Free plan is also free forever, and the platform comes with exceptional support, there’s literally no risk at your end.


When you sign up to systeme.io, you sign up for free and no credit card details are required.

16. Conclusion

In the never-ending quest of increasing sales, you have to navigate the trenches of digital marketing.


While converting potential customers to paying ones is the end goal, you have to always put their experience first for them to open their wallets.


Deploying the marketing tactics you have read about in this post should help you:

  • Reach a bigger target audience
  • Present your business in the best image
  • Concentrate on offering the best experience possible
  • Become less dependent on paid ads and get a lot more organic online sales

Once you're ready to take your online sales to new heights, sign up with systeme.io — we offer all the tools you need to implement what you've learned today, for free!


Cheers!

Other posts about online business:

Download the book

Get this free guide

The New System to Launch

an Online Business

What you'll learn:

  • How to start your first online business in 7 days
  • How to master a high-income online skill
  • The secrets to scaling your business to the next level

We HATE spam. Your email address is 100% secure