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 and inform your ecommerce CRO strategy.

Get started:

• Key factors that drive revenue in ecommerce

• 20 ways to increase ecommerce sales

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:

How to increase ecommerce sales

• Encourage product re-engagement

• Share marketing offers with onsite notifications

• Target visitor groups with personalized popups

• Experiment with different incentives

• Run a flash sale

• Keep building your email list

• Collect phone numbers for SMS marketing

• Use checkout page marketing

• Add upselling when products are added to the cart

• Add conversion elements to product category pages

• Implement a product quiz

• Experiment with product recommendations

• Reduce cart abandonment

• Build cart recovery, welcome, and post-purchase email flows

• Host a product giveaway

• Demonstrate your commitment to sustainability

• A/B test your content and campaigns

• Create interest with TikTok

• Collect customer feedback on your store

• Talk to an expert

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:

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!):

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 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

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:

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:

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:

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

3. Target visitor groups with personalized popups

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:

Next—

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

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:

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:

• How to use popup targeting

• Shopify properties in popups

• Klaviyo segment targeting

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

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:

If you're looking for more ideas, see these 20 discount and coupon ideas with examples from successful ecommerce businesses.

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:

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):

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:

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

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

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:

• Website popups

• Sticky bars

• Embedded forms

• Onsite notifications

• Live chat

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:

But—

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

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

For example—

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

Or—

Simple Self gives a popular free item:

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.

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):

Next—

Try Guys collect only phone numbers in this SMS popup:

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

• How to create SMS popups

• How to create multistep popups

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:

And—

OddBalls proposes a mystery offer with a nice discount:

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:

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:

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:

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

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:

And—

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

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:

Or—

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

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).

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).

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:

Or—

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

Or—

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

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:

Or—

An exit intent popup with an extra discount:

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

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).

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

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:

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

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:

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:

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:

Or—

Dollar Shave Club uses a different format:

Dive deeper:

• How to make website exit surveys

• How to create popup surveys [+examples]

• How to get feedback about your website [+tools]

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:

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

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:

• AI tools for ecommerce

• Guide to ecommerce SEO

• 11 trends in ecommerce for 2024

• 30+ ecommerce website design examples

• Ecommerce personalization guide: 10 tactics

• How to grow your ecommerce business: beginner's guide