Wisepops logo
cover21

Last updated Thu Aug 29 2024

How to Increase Ecommerce Sales: 20 Techniques [2024]

Let's help you increase your ecommerce sales.

In this guide, I've collected case studies, expert tips, and proven strategies to boost sales for ecommerce websites of all sizes.

Get started:

Start getting more sales with effective popups today

Engage your visitors with behavior-based popups that achieve conversion rates of up to 25%

popup animated

While this guide is dedicated to helping you grow sales on your ecommerce website, consider also this guide to getting sales on Shopify and these 10 commerce case studies with examples of successful sales strategies.

Key factors driving ecommerce sales

The reasons behind an ecommerce store's sales falling short of expectations differ from one business to another.

But the most common factors that determine success fall into these seven categories:

CategoryFactors
Store designNavigation, mobile optimization
Onsite marketingDiscount strategy, promotional offers, product recommendations, upselling and cross-selling
Offsite marketingSocial media content, influencer marketing, email marketing
Customer serviceSupport response time, customer support channels, FAQs
Conversion rate optimizationProduct page designs, checkout process, product descriptions
Trust and reputationCustomer reviews, social proof, trust badges
Competitor analysisUnique selling points, pricing comparison
Helpful tip:

"When it comes to ecommerce sales strategy, start with your offer. For example, it's essential to choose the right products for marketing offers. One way to do so is to find the specific quality of your product that helps your customers resolve specific problems or meet needs and focus on that quality in marketing messaging."

Pawel Lawrowski, a digital marketing expert
See how 500 Shopify stores engage visitors

1. Encourage product re-engagement

One way to increase ecommerce sales is to provide product recommendations based on browsing history. But, instead of showing the visited items on product pages only, you can make them easily discoverable from any page on your store.

Using AI Wishlist is a good way to do that.

Let me demonstrate with this example:

I visited three products on OddBalls (one of the UK's leading underwear brands) but didn't buy anything.

Instead of browsing more products, I decided to head back to the homepage. That's when an animated "bell" icon in the website's header caught my eye. With just a click, I could access the list of the products I had checked out:

opening the feed

Here's a closer look—

As you can see, it's a feed with notifications, with the list of viewed products at the top (that's AI Wishlist at work!):

recommended products

If customers click that first message, they will see the full list.

From there, it's easy to check out the items once again or even add them to the cart in a couple of clicks:

ai wishlist

AI Wishlist generates the list of products automatically. Thanks to a machine learning algorithm, products are strategically organized: the items with the highest likelihood of purchase are placed at the top of the feed.

This strategy to increase sales in ecommerce is proven to be effective: Shopify stores like OddBalls and Dusk have seen a 5% increase in their sales.

If you'd like to try AI Wishlist on your store, you can get started here:

No cc needed, free beta testing. Learn more about AI Wishlist

danmodified

"The notification feed at OddBalls has been instrumental in helping us to gather data, assist conversion rates, promoting new launches and ultimately generating revenue since we launched it."

Dan Mitchell, Ecommerce Manager OddBalls

2. Share marketing offers with onsite notifications

Your homepage is the most visited page on your store. It gives the best chance to place marketing offers in front of customers. But here's the catch: you can only squeeze in so much before it starts looking cluttered.

Onsite notifications can be an effective way to add marketing offers to your homepage. They are a social media-inspired feed with notifications, but for ecommerce websites (in fact, AI Wishlist is a part of it).

Take a look—

Memo Paris features a homepage design that follows a common ecommerce technique: highlighting a single product, specifically the new collection. The result: a clean and gorgeous design:

ecommerce homepage memo paris

To keep things tidy, Memo Paris uses onsite notifications.

Here's how they look—a good-looking, stylish, and visitor-friendly way to engage them:

onsite notifications

The brand shares the most important marketing messages in the feed, including the product quiz, the starter kit, the most popular products, and a first customer bonus:

notification feed

As a result:

  • the homepage stays clean

  • you can make product discovery easier

  • the feed is non-intrusive, letting customers explore products on their own

Many stores have been successful in boosting their ecommerce sales with onsite notifications.

OddBalls, for example, generated £50,000 in revenues with one notification campaign containing a discount. Black Ember was able to drive over 4,000 shoppers to newly launched products from the homepage in just 14 days.

With onsite notifications, you can increase your ecommerce sales by sharing discount codes, new product launches, product quizzes, and other messages—all without cluttering your homepage. There's also built-in Shopify properties for more personalized campaigns.

Learn more about onsite notifications here.

Or, you can test them on your store for free:

No cc needed, unlimited free trial

logo

“Black Ember is a design-driven brand and [onsite notifications] provide a clean, modern, simple (and fun!) experience that aligns with our brand. We also love that it is fairly unobtrusive - it’s there but it's not in-your-face and does not interfere with the brand experience on our homepage.”

Black Ember

3. Target visitor groups with personalized popups

Amitai Sasson

"I know a lot of people are worried about popups and customer experience and I agree. But if you do popups right, then you can have them done tastefully, and you will reap the rewards."

Amitai Sasson, VP of ecommerce at Overstockart

Personalization through targeting is the best way to do popups "right."

Personalized popups are those designed to show to specific visitor groups based on their browsing or shopping experience, like:

  • Coupons for visited product categories

  • Upsell offers for items in the cart

  • Recommendations based on cart additions

  • Reactivation deals only for customers who haven't visited in X days/weeks

  • Special offers only for top spenders

  • An extra discount only for those with $100+ in the cart

Let's see some examples.

This product launch promotion campaign can be displayed to those who haven't checked them out yet:

website popup

Next—

This BOGO offer can be displayed only to the top spenders, encouraging them to buy more to get free items:

Time limited offer increase aov

Next—

This product discovery campaign is shown to those who visited a specific product, left the website, and then returned, motivating them to reconsider buying it:

returning campaign

Such context-based popups are much more relevant than their in-your-face counterparts, so they give you a better chance to increase your ecommerce sales.

You can create them using targeting and display rules in popup tools. They also have built-in Shopify properties and Klaviyo segment targeting—meaning you can create targeted campaigns using your Shopify and Klaviyo data.

Learn more about:

The quickest way to create personalized popups is with popup software created for ecommerce stores. Consider Wisepops—it's a top popup builder you can use to create all kinds of personalized popups (rated 4.9 stars on Shopify).

Grab a free account today to get started:

No cc needed, unlimited free trial. Learn more about Wisepops popup builder

Tip:

Create your offers on the qualities of your best customers.

Analyze your top 10% of customers to identify common traits (preferred product categories, buying times, locations, devices used, etc.). Then, create campaigns based on them. One example can be a mobile-only popup with a $20 discount only for the "bags" product category that appears only when a customer adds an item to the shopping cart.

Pawel Lawrowski, a digital marketing expert

4. Experiment with different incentives

Welcome discounts and sales are the most common discount examples ecommerce stores use to boost sales. But they're not the only ones.

You can use a variety of discount examples, customizing them for specific occasions and targeted customer groups:

Discount typeBest occasionsTarget customers
Percentage discounts (eg. 10% off)First-time purchaseAll visitors
New product launchThe most active customers
Seasonal salesPrice-sensitive customers
Abandoned cart recoveryCart abandoners
Fixed amount discounts (eg. $10 off)Minimum purchase thresholdAll customers
Product bundle dealAll customers
Loyalty discountRegistered customers
Buy one, get one free (BOGO)Product bundlingAll customers
Brand birthday salesAll customers
Seasonal promosCustomers looking for the best deal

If you're looking for more ideas, see these 18 discount and coupon ideas with examples from successful ecommerce businesses.

See how online stores use different incentives:

Sales promotion examples

5. Run a flash sale

A flash sale is a good tactic for driving ecommerce sales for both new and established stores. When used once in a while (say, once in two months), you can make up to 20% of your monthly sales in one day.

Here's proof—

Charlotte Bio, a natural cosmetics store with affordable prices (the priciest item is around $20), rarely holds flash sales. However, they've decided to run a six-hour sale to increase their online sales.

Here's how they promoted this sale:

Offsite promotionOnsite promotion
Paid social media adsA desktop popup + a mobile popup with a copyable discount code
Several emails with sale announcement and countdownA sticky popup with a code and a countdown timer

All these promotion tactics paid off nicely, as Charlotte Bio generated 17% of monthly sales within six hours.

Let me show you how they did it.

When customers arrived at the desktop website, they were greeted by this announcement popup with a discount code (which they could apply to the cart right away in one click):

charlotte bio mobile sale popup

Marilou Bertrand, one of the minds behind this campaign, predicted that many visitors would not choose to apply the discount immediately. So, she added a sticky bar to the top of the store to make the discount easily accessible at all times:

website bar charlotte bio

Adding the bar turned out to be the key to success.

Marilou Bertrand

“We added the bar with the countdown to reinforce the sense of urgency for those who did not apply the code in the popup, which was key to success.”

Marilou Bertrand, Director of Digital Marketing, Charlotte Bio

In fact, 236 shoppers applied the discount code by using the bar, which meant that it maximized visitors' purchase intention:

website bar performance

If you'd like to learn more about this flash sale: Charlotte Bio case study

Also, see our detailed guide to flash sales for tips on how to boost your online sales.

6. Keep building your email list

You probably have a signup campaign or two running on your store, but what's also important is to experiment with incentives, as they can speed up your email list building significantly.

First, consider these to build your email list:

Also, if your campaigns aren't performing well, consider experimenting with the incentives. Even one change can really make a difference in your sales.

Here are some examples for you:

When I visited Flaus a few months ago, the brand offered a $10 discount for its first-time customers:

popup example made with wisepops

But—

A few days ago, the incentive was changed. Instead of the fixed amount discount, there was a percentage discount:

discount to get ecommerce sales

Besides experimenting with discounts, you can also try other incentives.

For example—

Kirrin Finch offers a $100 gift card in addition to 10% off...

a gift card popup

Or—

Simple Self gives a popular free item:

discount and free item incentive

If you need detailed breakdowns of successful email list building campaigns, check out these case studies:

Blume converts 5% of its visitors

Quandoo grows its email list 20% faster

7. Collect phone numbers for SMS marketing

Some of your customers might prefer receiving marketing offers via text messages instead of emails. Think of those overfilled email inboxes—it's hard to find anything there.

harvey hodd

"If your growth plans don't include SMS, your plans aren't finished. Not only do text-based promo campaigns convert at a higher rate than email, smart brands are now using SMS to build sticky customers for the long term."

Harvey Hood, CEO & Founder, Relo

No surprise that 38% of Shopify stores collect phone numbers from visitors.

To get started:

  • Get an SMS marketing app

  • Add phone number signup fields to your popups and forms

  • Connect your forms and the app to have leads imported there manually

A popular way to collect phone numbers is with SMS popups or multistep popups (multistep ones increase conversions by 43%, as they're perceived as less intrusive).

Example of a multi-step campaign:

Death Wish Coffee, one of the top Shopify stores (as you can see, the trick is simple: collect emails in one popup window and the phone numbers in the next):

Multistep popup Example 3

Next—

Try Guys collect only phone numbers in this SMS popup:

sms popup example

Get started with this tactic with these step-by-step guides:

Need some campaign inspiration? Check out these popup design examples.

8. Use checkout page marketing

Optimizing your checkout page can help you get a small boost in ecommerce sales. One way to do so is with checkout page marketing.

Checkout marketing includes:

  • recommending related products

  • adding upsell offers with items related to those in the cart

  • reducing bounce rate with exit intent popups

  • giving small extra discounts to those trying to leave

  • adding a countdown timer to drive the sense of urgency

  • displaying trust signals such as free returns, safe payments, etc.

  • adding customer support options such as live chat or FAQ links

Here are a couple of examples:

Prada uses an exit popup to encourage leaving customers to reconsider buying:

cart abandonment popup example

And—

OddBalls proposes a mystery offer with a nice discount:

upsell on checkout

9. Add upselling when products are added to the cart

Customers who add items to their shopping cart are your best opportunity to boost sales by raising the average order value. Show them offers exactly when they add an item to capitalize on their peak purchase intent.

Allbirds, for example, show "You might also like" recommendations:

allbirds upsell popup

Next—

Ralph Lauren shows a "purchased with" section with related products in a small window that slides in from the right with the cart addition confirmation:

purchased with recommendations

Next—

If you're a subscription business, you can encourage those who add one-time delivery to upgrade to a subscription, as Magic Spoon does here:

getting ecommerce sales with upsell

These promotions can help you increase revenue in ecommerce by focusing on customers with the highest purchase intent.

See how to upsell with popups:

How to make upsell popups [+examples]

10. Add conversion elements to product category pages

You can increase customer interest in checking out your products by adding small labels with promotions and social proof, like:

  • new arrival

  • exclusive product

  • deal of the day

  • 10% off in a bundle

  • best seller

  • new lower price

  • save 20% by building a kit

Here's how other ecommerce businesses did it—

Soko Glam:

products with labels for conversions

And—

Keurig (note the different prices if bought in a kit):

product menu category

11. Implement a product quiz

Product quizzes improve the shopping experience by personalizing it, reducing decision fatigue, and giving relevant product recommendations.

Implementing a quiz can help you increase ecommerce sales in your store, especially if you're selling many products.

Take inspiration from Soko Glam's Skin Concierge quiz:

quiz

Or—

Beardbrand's "What type of a beardsman are you?" quiz:

collecting emails with quizzes

According to Eric Bandholz, the founder of Beardbrand, the brand was able to generate over 150,000 leads thanks to the quiz (read more about this project in our guide to collecting emails).

“We’ve had nearly 150k people take the quiz, and it’s helped us build our second most successful email list… If you’re willing to put in the hard work, you can see tremendous results and separate your brand from the generic marketing of other companies.”

Eric Bandholz, Founder of Beardbrand

Adding a quiz to your ecommerce site is something you can do fairly easily with a dedicated app (Typeform is one of the most popular ones, but also check out Shop Quiz if you're on Shopify—it gives 100 monthly quiz engagements for free).

Reviews of the top quiz apps: email list building tools

12. Experiment with product recommendations

Relevant product recommendations improve customer experience, so they're one of the best ways to increase ecommerce sales.

Some examples of product recommendations to consider:

  • recently viewed items

  • customers also bought

  • "you might also like"

  • frequently bought together

  • "complete the look"

  • recommended accessories

  • bestsellers

  • new arrivals

There are many ways to show product recommendations.

One way is to display them under a product a customer is viewing, like here:

complete the look product recommendations

Or—

Add an Instagram feed with your posts to product pages like this:

instagram feed

Or—

You can recommend discounted products and drive traffic to them with a popup announcement like this one from Patagonia:

patagonia discounted product recommendations

If this strategy to boost ecommerce sales sounds good, these resources will be helpful to get started:

Get tools: Product recommendation software

See some ecommerce examples: Product recommendation examples

13. Reduce cart abandonment

Abandoned carts are a problem for every ecommerce store, so following the best practices is always a good idea.

Consider:

  • adding trust signals to the checkout

  • offering a guest checkout

  • adding customer reviews to the checkout

  • making live chat assistance available

  • showing the shipping and other fees before the checkout

If you have already implemented these best practices, then maybe you'll benefit from more interactive methods.

Like a countdown timer on the checkout page:

countdown on shopify checkout

Or—

An exit intent popup with an extra discount:

cart abandonment popup

Another (and a must-do) campaign is a series of cart recovery emails. Let's talk about them in the next section.

See how ecommerce businesses recover sales with exit popups:

Cart abandonment popup examples [+tutorial]

14. Build cart recovery, welcome, and post-purchase email flows

An email flow is an automated sequence of emails that you send to your customers based on their actions in your store:

  • Welcome email: this is the automatic email a customer receives after signing up. A welcome email introduces your brand, highlights your value proposition, and often offers a first-time purchase discount.

  • Post-purchase emails: these are promotional and educational emails designed to increase customer retention and engagement. They include product care guides, sales announcements, review requests, and product launch notifications.

  • Cart recovery emails: these are a series of two or three emails triggered when customers abandon their shopping carts. The first email, sent within an hour, typically reminds them of their abandoned cart while the follow-up emails are sent in a day or two. They can share discounts and share reviews of the abandoned item.

Advice on choosing email marketing apps: 40 top Shopify apps (includes Klaviyo, Omnisend, and others).

More on email marketing:

7 re-engagement emails for ecommerce (includes examples of campaigns ecommerce stores use to increase visits from customers)

Welcome messages examples for customers (examples of welcome emails with greetings for new subscribers)

15. Host a product giveaway

Giving away an expensive or popular item from your store is a proven way to improve ecommerce sales and lead generation.

Let me show you how it's done.

Faguo, a clothing store, aimed to boost lead generation, which was limited to a few hundred leads per month, and increase online sales. The store had email popups and forms but could not achieve the needed growth rate.

Martin Charousset, the leader of their marketing team, decided to give away a pair of popular Faguo sneakers once a month with this gamified campaign:

After some initial testing, the campaign gained nice momentum, and Faguo managed to acquire over 48,000 emails.

Here are the results for both mobile and desktop campaigns:

Thanks to a much larger email list, Faguo was able to boost ecommerce sales, too, as those new leads were interested in the brand's products.

If you'd like to know more about this project (also available in French):

Faguo product giveaway case study

Need some inspiration? See these 10 proven giveaway ideas

16. Demonstrate your commitment to sustainability

Your brand's values, mission, and processes can make customers prefer you over competitors. In fact, products with environmental claims see a sales growth of 1.7% versus those without.

Take the example of Asphalte.

Being eco-friendly in fashion is quite a challenge on its own, but this DNVB brand decided to go further and eliminate waste by opting for a pre-order business model (meaning they make only the items customers order).

After doing some experiments, Ben, Asphalte's head of growth, found one thing:

Picture of Benjamin Mateo

"We realized that customer lifetime value was higher after a customer has learned about our mission and how we work."

Benjamin Mateo, head of growth, Asphalte

Asphalte chose to place its eco-friendly business model at the forefront of the marketing strategy.

One campaign that helped the brand improve both lead generation and ecommerce sales was the popup that invited the visitors to participate in the product survey (eg choose the products for manufacturing):

This campaign helped to introduce more visitors to the way Asphalte produces its clothing, which resonated with many.

In fact—

On average, around 10,000 monthly visitors viewed the product survey, with about 4,000 of them signing up to get updated when the items are manufactured:

While Asphalte's campaign is only one way to demonstrate your brand's values and mission, using this strategy is definitely a worthy idea.

Also, to learn more about Asphalte's campaign, check out (also available in French):

Asphalte case study

Also consider:

Examples of ethical marketing [incl. Patagonia, Allbirds, and TOMS]

17. A/B test your content and campaigns

Even the most successful ecommerce marketing campaigns often begin with modest achievements, and A/B testing helps them get better results.

Here are common ideas for A/B testing you can do on your homepage, product pages, and website popups:

ElementExample tests on HomepagesExample tests on product pagesExamples of tests in popups
Product imagesFeatured product carousel, grid layoutDifferent image sizes and placementsVariation in image size, placement, and products shown
Product descriptionsFeatured promotions or deals, value propositionVarying lengths and tones of descriptionsCopy, timing, and frequency
CTA buttonsNewsletter signup form, limited-time offers bannerTesting button colors and text variationsText, color, and placement variations
Pricing infoProminent "Sale" or "New Arrivals" sectionDisplaying sale prices or highlighting discountsIncentives or discounts sizes offered
Size & fit guidesSize guide callout or interactive fit toolPlacement and visibility of size guidesInclusion of size guide or fit quiz in popup
Customer reviewsTestimonials carousel or social proof sectionPlacement and format of customer reviewsRequest for feedback or review in popup

Useful guides for improving your store's performance:

How to write product descriptions

A/B testing for popups

Popup copy tips

Also, if you'd like a tutorial on how to test different marketing messaging and tactics in popups, this video can help:

18. Create interest with TikTok

Already, about 10% of Shopify businesses use the official TikTok app. Though 10% might seem small, it represents about 460,000 stores, with adoption expected to continue growing.

If you're wondering if TikTok is right for your online store, then ask yourself these questions. If you answer agree even once, then the answer to your question is probably "yes."

So:

  • Do you think your product will look good on video?

  • Does your target audience use TikTok?

  • Does your store create educational content for customers?

For an example of how businesses use TikTok to increase ecommerce sales visit Allbirds—its strategy is diverse and inspiring:

tik tok allbirds

19. Collect customer feedback on your store

Asking customers for feedback could be one of the most effective ways to find ways to grow ecommerce sales. They can give you ideas to improve your website, customer support, and even products.

A clothing store, for example, might ask these questions:

  • How would you rate your shopping experience?

  • Did our sizing information help you find the right fit?

  • Any clothing styles you'd like to see more of?

  • Is there anything we can improve to enhance your experience?

  • Do you have any additional comments or suggestions for us?

To get started—

Consider feedback emails and website survey forms.

Examples:

Converse asks visitors about their shopping experience like this:

survey

Or—

Dollar Shave Club uses a different format:

feedback form

20. Talk to an expert

If these ways to increase sales in ecommerce fail, consider getting some help from an expert. There's a chance that you just need some tips and guidance to start getting more orders.

For example, they might advise you to:

  • double down your effort on the acquisition channel that works

  • go to an influencer (or not, if you're too small)

  • start blogging

A quick tip—

One simple and free way to get legit help is to ask questions on Reddit.

I've come across a lot of threads where ecommerce store owners ask others to take a look at their websites and propose some improvements, like this one:

reddit advice

If you're unsure where to start, go Reddit Ecommerce group—folks like you post their websites there quite often.

Case study on increasing ecommerce sales

Emoi emoi, a French lifestyle clothing brand, made over $90,000 in revenue thanks to personalized campaigns.

Learn more

Summary

Increasing ecommerce sales is hard but—

It's nothing that you can't do if you follow the best practices. I hope this guide gave you some good ideas that you could try even today.

In the meantime, also consider these helpful resources and guides we created for ecommerce store owners and marketers like you:

Oleksii Kovalenko

Oleksii Kovalenko is a digital marketing expert and a writer with a degree in international marketing. He has seven years of experience helping ecommerce store owners promote their businesses by writing detailed, in-depth guides.

Education:

Master's in International Marketing, Academy of Municipal Administration

Related articles

9/9/2024

Learn how to create a pop up wheel for your website and convert visitors. See examples of spin wheel popups.

main

8/30/2024

Learn how to lower customer acquisition costs by focusing on your existing customers and optimizing conversions.

Help