Do you want to increase sales for your WooCommerce business? Boosting your sales allows you to become more profitable, entice more customers and reduce any risks to your business. The greater your profits, the more you can reinvest into your business, website, and products. This article will look at how to boost sales for your WooCommerce store.
Short-Term Strategy Is Not The Answer
Many entrepreneurs fall into the trap of making short-term gains. The short-term strategy focuses on quick wins later down the sales funnel without addressing longer-term strategies that will facilitate sustainable growth. For example, you might focus on techniques for managing your deliveries before ensuring you have high-quality leads coming down the sales funnel. Adopting short-term practices is ultimately damaging to your business’s success and reputation, and can have the following negative implications for your business:
Pulls Focus From The Customers You Have
Adopting short-term strategies won’t help you build a relationship and plan for the customers you already have. You will see high customer attrition if you aren’t aligning your short-term strategy with a longer-term, more sustainable program. You are 55–65% more likely to sell to a customer you already have than a new customer. Only focusing on bringing in new clients will ultimately result in fewer sales and jeopardize your existing customer relationships.
Impacts Long-Term Sustainability
A well-planned long-term strategy can give you the foundations you need to grow your business. A short-term plan doesn’t create an environment that brings sustained revenue over time. To mitigate against external risks, you need a sustainable longer-term strategy that serves your existing customers and guarantees sales.
Prevents Building Customer Loyalty
Short-termism is the biggest obstacle to fostering customer loyalty. 81% of customers buy from brands that they trust. Focusing on a series of disjointed short-term campaigns will distract from one of the most successful long-term campaigns a WooCommerce store can make: creating a loyal customer. Loyal customers are more likely to make it through your sales pages and make that final purchase.
Ignores The Quality Of Your Customer
Many short-term strategies focus on the conversion part of the sales funnel. But this doesn’t mean the customers you bring in will buy from your business. If you don’t focus on the top of the sales funnel, you are ultimately wasting time on your short-term campaigns by focusing on conversions that won’t bring you decent profits.
Damages Reputation
A series of short-term campaigns that fail to meet the mark with your customers can often come across as spammy or even predatory. Over time, this can ultimately damage your business reputation. Focusing on campaigns that provide value to your loyal customers can help give your business credibility.
Not All Short-Term Strategies Are Bad
A well-planned short-term strategy can be a significant part of a long-term campaign. Flash sales or a Black Friday price drop can increase sales and bring in customers you can later work on retaining. It can help you raise brand awareness by creating a campaign you can promote on social media. Flash sales offer short-term lead generation that you can incorporate and develop as part of a longer-term strategy.
Optimize Every Stage Of A Customer Buying Cycle
A long-term strategy requires you to review every stage of your buying cycle and continuously make improvements. It would help if you understood who your customers are, their preferences, and what they want from their purchases. You can do this by running surveys, quizzes, and using questionnaire plugins.
A customer buying cycle splits into several components:
- A customer becomes aware of their needs
- They search for their needed items and alternatives
- They assess which item is the best value for money (the least ‘risky’ choice)
- They decide to purchase
- They reap the benefits of the purchase
Understanding who your customers are will help you determine their needs, risk assessments, and what influences their final decision to buy a product.
The Benefits Of A Long-Term Strategy
A long-term benefit brings several vital growth elements to your business. There are many positives to explore, from sustainable revenue to a deep understanding of your business successes.
Leverage The Power Of Customer Segments
Customer segments are a powerful tool to have in a company’s arsenal. It allows you to direct your marketing budget towards specific customer groups and benefit from personalized marketing campaigns on particular products. It can also help highlight customer groups undergoing natural attrition rates or where you need to prevent card abandonment in WooCommerce.
Grow Your Subscriber List
Understanding what customers want can help you leverage the power of a subscriber list. You’ll be able to curate value-added content, better product marketing, and newsletters that can help you grow your email list and develop better customer relationships. The more high-quality customers you have on your subscriber list, the better the response to email marketing campaigns.
Understand What You’re Doing Well (And What You’re Not)
A long-term strategy can help you evaluate what products and campaigns resonate well with your customers. It can also help you see where you aren’t doing so well. Utilizing the results of customer surveys and quizzes can help you gain honest insight from your clients on where you can improve and strengthen your business.
More Accurate Growth Projections
With a solid long-term strategy, you can create more accurate sales projections for your business. Short-term sales don’t offer the ability to predict your success rate more than a few weeks or months into the future. A long-term strategy allows you to understand your cash flow better and reduce the risk of external factors jeopardizing your business.
Knowledge Is Power
Once you know how your customers tick, you can review your WooCommerce site and see where you can encourage your customers to purchase repeatedly. Making the checkout process as easy to navigate and straightforward as possible is one of the best ways to boost sales for your WooCommerce store.
Use A Buy Now Button
A Buy Now button facilitates a direct payment process for your customer. If they are browsing for one specific item, then the Buy Now button makes it easier for your customers to purchase before they rethink their decision. The longer the sale process takes, the quicker potential customers abandon their carts.
Product Recommendations
Product recommendations drive around 50% of an average order value. Cross-selling related or complimenting items to a customer and upselling just before checkout can create an excellent opportunity to play on a customer’s impulse before purchasing.
Avoid Abandoned Carts
Abandoned carts are a huge risk with a WooCommerce site. Many people cite a poor or long checkout experience as reasons to ditch the cart. You can avoid abandoned carts by creating auto-complete forms, having an easy guest checkout process, keeping shipping costs low, and outlining them at the start of the shopping process.
Improve Payment Options
The more payment options you have available, the more likely your customer will be able to purchase an item from your business. Explore new technologies and ensure popular staples like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay are available for your customers. You should also be able to show that customer payments stay protected from cyber attacks with decent encryption.
Optimize The Order Fulfillment Process
Streamlining the order fulfillment process will also help boost sales and bring back repeat business. You can streamline the order fulfillment process by providing customers with updates about their order, and making tracking information readily available. Creating fast and next-day delivery options with transparent tracking options is another customer must. Ensure you are always on top of your stock management and are always able to fulfill orders placed by your customers
Make The Return Process Easy
Complex return processes can completely ruin a customer experience. 52% of customers abandon a cart for fear of a difficult return process. Make it easy for the customer to find information about a return policy. If there is a problem with their order, ensure they can request a refund and a new order promptly. Make sure you have easy-to-use return shipping labels to save your customers time returning their orders.
Create A Customer Loyalty Program
A customer loyalty program can help entice customers back to your business time and time again. Discounts and subscribe and save programs can significantly boost customer loyalty over time. In any given business, as little as 1 out of 5 customers can drive as much as 80% of company revenue. Using discounts after a certain number of purchases can encourage those repeat customers to spend more each time they visit your site.
Final Thoughts
Solely focusing on short-term sales strategies will not lead your business to success. Short-term sales can lead to higher customer attrition rates that stop you from bringing on longer-term customers that can boost your brand loyalty. Implementing a longer-term strategy that places the focus on customer needs and their experience is what will ultimately grow your sales. Combine this with successful short-term plans like flash sales to draw in new clients, then convert them to repeat customers through customer loyalty programs and an optimized checkout process.
