How Pushing Customers Down E-Commerce Sales Channels Can Increase Sales

We have successfully set-up, managed and sold e-commerce stores in the past. One of the main factors that allowed us to run these stores effectively and increase web sales was actively pushing consumers down the e-commerce sales channel, even those that rang us to place an order. Thinking of launching a store for your online business idea is one thing, creating one that is successful though, is actually quite hard to do!

Do you really need a phone number if you have an online store?

Most consumers will look for an address and telephone number before placing an order with an e-commerce store. A phone number alongside an address gives your potential customers the confidence they need to make a purchase. Phone numbers are still as important now as they were before the e-commerce stores were alive.

How can you push telephone sales through your e-commerce store?

It would be rude to greet a customer by sounding uninterested and pointing them elsewhere.

You have a few options here:

• Offer a discount
• Explain your loyalty discounts
• Free competition entry

You can see the pattern occurring here; incentives…

Offer customers an incentive to go to your website. A discount code could just be a 5% one off that you change every week. Once a customer realises how simple and easy the process it is, they will continue to order online.

It’s really important to push all orders through online sales channels, and here is why…

Increasing capacity and efficiency

When a business hits its capacity, something needs to give. You need to increase your staffing levels to meet the increased demand. The problem is, just one month later, if sales dip, you are stuck paying those extra employees.

Pushing telephone sales through your online sales channel will save your company time and money by ensuring you do not:

• Have to directly speak with the customer to produce revenue
• Go through the time consuming process of manually inputting order details
• Risk data entry errors due to the above
• Have to employ extra staff members to deal with increased sales volume

Boosting revenue

If you are using clever shopping cart software, you will be automatically up selling to your clients to try and increase web sales.

Under the product listing you could have “Other customers also purchased…” with 3-4 products listed; the same happens at the checkout.

Customers buying bicycle inner tubes will suddenly realise that they do in fact, need a puncture repair kit and dust caps.

Better still; consumers will browse through other products on your site. Although they might have come for an inner tube, they might not be able to resist the offer you have on tyres!

Statistics from Econsultancy shows that up selling products could boost revenue by around 4%…4% for nothing!

Propel exposure

One of a business’s best marketing tools is recommendations. This only comes about when a company has a solid customer base that likes the service and/or products that they receive. A customer placing orders via the internet, in comparison to another method such as in-store or telephone, is more much likely to give the company exposure.

Why? People are lazy and sharing information on the internet is easy. You can expect your business to get much more exposure via social media platforms thanks to pushing your customers down your online sales channel; leading to more sales.