Don’t let the quest for more “traffic” get in the way of your Christmas sales.

Why chase around and pay out big money for more hits or visits when the visitors you are getting aren’t buying?

The Christmas season is upon us and our ecommerce clients want to know how to increase their sales in this prime season. Increasing traffic through your website (by whatever means) may be the least cost effective way of increasing your profit. As a company we invest more time in our existing customers than chasing around for new ones.

Why? Well it’s more cost effective to work with what you already have.

So here are our top 5 ideas for increasing your order values, and they are all about maximising the basket value for each visitor.

 

No 5. Loyalty schemes – “Love us and we will love you back”

Build in a loyalty scheme. All the big players do it, even M&S have brought out their Sparks card and you don’t think twice about using your Nectar card, so why not add a loyalty scheme to your website. This could be developed in many different ways depending on your target market and the type of products you are selling.Loyalty points can be awarded for sharing what they purchased on Facebook or quite simply giving money off on their next order. How it’s done is dependent on your marketing strategy. Perhaps give them discounts if they setup a prepay account; 10% off if you pay £50 into your account and spend it as you go.There are many ways of achieving brand loyalty. Give us a call and we can discuss the options you should consider.

No 4. Bundle products – “this matches that”

Bundles always work well, especially at Christmas time when shoppers are feeling generous and time is short. Bundling products has been a trader’s trick since the beginning of time, and yet many of our clients don’t do it. Why not bundle three products together and give them a single price, showing a small discount achieved by buying the items together. Alternatively setup a promotion, buy 2 and get the third at half price. Shoppers love bundles and they love saving a few pounds, so maximise the value of their order by giving them a bundle of products instead if the one they came to buy.

No 3. Up sell – “to the bigger better (more expensive) item”

So you are selling a T shirt but the same colour sweat shirt brings you four times the profit. So why not ask the customer to consider buying the sweat shirt. Better still try and get them to buy both by offering an incentive on adding the sweatshirt to the basket too. Perhaps a multi buy discount or mix this concept with no 4 above and bundle the two together. Upselling is simple way of increasing the basket value.

No 2. Cross sell – “This will work well with that”

So our innocent shopper added the Bakery book to their basket – well how about that, we can now show them the baking tin and food mixer and utensil set that would go very nicely with that – thank you very much.If you match the “you may also like” items well within each product (instead of automating the system), you will be surprised by the uptake. No need to for anything else, just make them aware that the item they are buying matches other items they “should” also buy!

No 1. And at the top of the board our number 1 is...

Free delivery. 

In the rather faceless world of ecommerce, every shopper is after a good deal. Provide free delivery and they will buy. Free delivery over a fixed time period or over a certain basket value is great. Work out what the average basket value is on your website and set the free delivery offer just slightly higher 10% or 20% is enough – don’t get greedy or it won work.So there you go. It does take effort to go through your CMS and setup the promotions and the product attributes but it is effort well invested and could increase you sales without any additional traffic.