After the effort of designing your products and creating your online store, all you have to do is wait for sales to flow without pause… right? Well, we have to tell you that uploading products to your store isn’t enough. Don’t get discouraged! There are many ways to improve and boost sales.
Today we are going to show you proven strategies to scale your online sales and reach new horizons with your merch, whether you want to expand your merch business or if you are just starting out. Let’s start!
1. Stablish Your Value Proposition
Why should your target audience buy your products? If you can’t answer that question, neither can your potential clients.
It is very important that you make it clear what your audience needs and why they will find it in your store and not in your competitors. What makes you different? What benefits can they find in your products? What problem can you solve that the competition can’t?
Make sure you communicate these elements very well so that your potential clients easily know why they should choose you.
2. Know Your Audience
If you are looking to increase your sales, you can’t lose sight of your audience! There are two things you can do to know your audience better:
- Create a buyer persona. A representation of your ideal customer, so you know who to approach when promoting your store. Try to align this ideal persona with current buyers to make them more true to reality.
- Look for look-alike audiences. These are audiences that share characteristics with yours, so they might be interested in your products. Look, for example, for niches similar to yours.
Either way, the important thing is to focus on the people to whom you direct your merch and how they interact with your store.
3. Use SEO To Your Advantage
People tend to go to sites that appear higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). For this reason, it’s essential that your online store is SEO-friendly. SEO (search engine optimization) is the practice of making your website more visible on SERPs.
When you use certain relevant terms called keywords, your store is more likely to rank higher in SERPs. To do this, do some keyword research and use them in your store, both in titles and descriptions.
With Vexels, you can save yourself a lot of SEO work. Our AI Merch Maker automatically creates SEO-friendly titles and descriptions for each of your products.
4. Write Honest Copy And Direct CTAs
Just in case, a CTA (Call to Action) button is an instruction for users to make them perform a certain action. This button can motivate your users to interact with the site and also help them navigate your store with ease.
You can write whatever you want both in your CTA and in the rest of the texts in your store, but besides being clear and direct, it’s important to be honest! Don’t stretch the truth or make promises you can’t keep: your customers will value honesty above all, and it may be a reason why they decide to buy from you again. Honesty will give you a trustworthy image that will increase the credibility of your store. 
5. Offer Benefits
Let’s face it: we all like benefits, especially if it’s discounts, gifts, or free stuff. Although it may not seem like it, these types of strategies can increase engagement, create buzz about your store, or even motivate your customers to buy more to get benefits or gifts.
Here are some options you can work with:
Discounts, Promotions, Packs
A discount can encourage buyers who are not yet sure to make the purchase, as well as add extra products as a promotion (play with the sense of urgency if the promo’s here for a limited time!). You can also bulk similar items together to create discounted packs or special benefits.
Free Gifts Or Samples
People love gifts. Offering a free sample of another product with each purchase can be a good way to encourage the customer to come back. You can also give away a free product for every certain number of purchases or even organize a giveaway for an expensive or popular product, which will attract more people to your store in the hope of winning it.
Free Shipping, Money-Back Guaranteed
Offering free shipping can change everything. According to Shopify, two-thirds of shoppers expect free shipping and 49% will abandon their online carts if extra costs are too high. Your customers may even prefer to buy more if they get free shipping. On the other hand, offering money-back guarantees on certain products will help reduce the risk perceived by your customers, and thus increase their trust in your store and your credibility.
6. Make Paying Easy
It would be a shame if your customers made it all the way to checkout, only to give up because the process is tedious or complicated. To avoid this, keep these points in mind:
Alternative Payment Options
Although it is not necessary that you include all possible payment methods, it is most sensible that you include the majority, or at least the most important ones at a national or international level, so as not to lose purchases. These are the ones we recommend:
- Visa
- MasterCard
- PayPal
- Apple Pay
- Google Pay
- Maestro
- American Express
- Venmo
If you create your store with Vexels, all payment options supported by Stripe are already included, from large global networks such as Visa and Mastercard to local networks like Cartes Bancaires in France or Interac in Canada.
Easy Checkout Process
A complex checkout process can end in an abandoned cart. For example, if it takes too long, it asks for too much information, or you need to create an account. Make sure the process is as clear, easy, and quick as possible.
Easy Returns
Although it may sound contradictory, making returns easy can work in your favor and increase your online sales. Why? Because your customers value the trust they can place in your store and accessing a good service. If you have an easy-to-understand return policy, offer free shipping, and handle the process quickly and efficiently, your customers will have a positive opinion of your store and are more likely to buy again.
7. Promote On Social Media
An active presence on social media can give you the visibility you need, in addition to generating a closer relationship with your target audience, since it makes you more accessible. You don’t necessarily have to be on all existing platforms, but it’s important that you use those where your audience is. For example, for a young audience, TikTok is more relevant. For an older audience, try Facebook.
Upload attractive photos (a good Instagram feed can do wonders!) and post diverse content regularly to attract potential buyers. Remember that this content must be of interest and relevant, in addition to transmitting your brand’s message. The goal is for it to resonate with your target audience and drive traffic to your store.
Connect Your Store to Social Media
If you can connect your store with social media, do it. By integrating your e-commerce store with your social accounts, your customers will have more places to find you and buy your merch, and you will be making it easier for them to purchase.
Google And Facebook Ads
If you do it right, paid ads can be one of the most effective tactics to boost sales. For instance, you can create ads on social media like Instagram or Facebook, which will help you reach a larger audience. When using Google Ads, having done a good SEO job on your store is key. By using keywords relevant to the search intent of your products, your ads will be shown to the correct audience.
8. Build A Landing Page
The design of your website is key when it comes to keeping users on the site until they make a purchase. From clarity and organization to colors, appearance is a key deciding factor and one of the reasons why an e-commerce platform is judged the most.
Not only that: creating targeted landing pages can increase your conversions by up to 300%, according to Hubspot. These landing pages should be tailored for interested audiences and have personalized CTA buttons. Make sure all those pages load quickly! On average, users wait 2 seconds for a page to load.
Mobile Optimization
Don’t forget to optimize your site for mobile! It’s very likely that your potential customers enter your store from mobile phones and tablets, not just desktop computers. It’s also possible that mobile users don’t purchase in a single session, but return later from another device. Make sure that finding those products again is as easy as possible for them, as well as the checkout process for those who do convert from the mobile version.
In any case, remember that you can build your online store with Vexels in just a few clicks. You’ll be able to create and customize an online POD-integrated store from which to sell your products, as well as track its metrics and receive curated marketing advice. We know that creating a store takes time and effort, so our new solution transforms days of work into hours by unifying the entire process in one place.
9. Use Quality Photos And Mockups
Don’t skimp on the quality of your product photos. Clients will use them to see what they look like in real life! A bad photo can give the impression that your merch is of poor quality or reduce trust in your business.
In addition to photos, make sure to create quality mockups that clearly show the products you offer. Our AI Merch Maker, for example, allows you to automatically match your designs with different products to create incredible mockups, with different color variants.
10. Offer Fewer Choices
To prevent your potential customers from feeling overwhelmed by a too wide range of products and leaving before they can decide, it is recommended that you offer a more limited variety of products or that you divide them in intelligent ways so an accessible and manageable quantity is displayed.
Showcase Popular Products
To further simplify decision-making, put the most popular things in the spotlight. Users are more likely to click on those products and trust their quality.
11. Rely On Email Marketing
A good email marketing campaign can help you drive traffic to your website and increase sales. According to Campaign Monitor, 59% of marketers receive the most ROI from email. You can start with a welcome email and a weekly or monthly newsletter with news, promos, or offers. Additionally, there are several accessible and affordable tools that will allow you to create your own email marketing strategy.
Follow-Up Emails
The interaction with your customers does not have to end when they purchase the product. Consider sending follow-up emails with instructions, tips, guides, promotions, or any relevant information, even personalized recommendations!
Abandoned Carts
Another option is to send an email to those customers who have added one of your products to the cart but have not purchased it. Remind them of the item, especially if you are offering a discount or special benefit, and add a clear CTA that invites them to continue with the purchase. If the item is part of a limited-time promotion, it’s a great opportunity to generate a sense of urgency!
12. Blog Regularly
A good strategy to attract traffic to your store and become an authority in your area of business is blogging regularly about topics related to your products. Don’t forget to use keywords in posts to benefit from SEO and get your site to appear in relevant search results.
13. Offer A Subscription Model
To simplify the purchase of products that your users buy frequently, consider the option of offering a subscription model that also provides them with certain benefits or gifts. Another way to encourage recurring purchases is a loyalty program, which offers rewards or benefits to frequent customers.
14. Improve Customer Support
Things can go wrong, and your customers are likely to let you know. Therefore, you must be prepared and offer good customer service to resolve their problems as easily and quickly as possible. Take into account and apply the feedback you consider relevant. This way, you will create a stronger bond with your audience.
Add A Chatbox
Most likely, you will not be able to dedicate 100% of your time to customer service, so one option to consider is installing a chatbox, a software that simulates conversations with human users. These chatboxes can not only solve your users’ problems but also give them recommendations and guide them through your store.
15. Analyze To Improve
Selling merch online is a lifelong learning process. You’re going to make mistakes from which you’ll learn, and this is essential to continue growing. Analyzing what you have done will help you find solutions to improve your store and your sales.
A/B Testing
A good way to test new strategies is to carry out an A/B test. Divide your audience into two or more groups and apply different variations of, for example, an email marketing campaign. By analyzing those results, you will know which of all the variations is the most effective.
Analytics
A data-driven approach can help you provide better service to your customers. That is, to make your decisions based on data analysis and generate your strategies from the metrics you obtain. In this way, you will be able to solve specific problems and have a complete idea of the status of your store. If you create your store on Vexels, we offer you tools with the most relevant metrics, but you can also connect your own analytics if you prefer!
16. Add Testimonials
Another way to gain credibility is by showing social proof on your website. For example, displaying customer testimonials with opinions of your products. If your audience doesn’t trust you yet, they’ll trust the people who have already bought your merch. Whether through reviews, case studies, or mentions on social media, it’s important that other people also talk about your store.
Improving sales may require effort, but optimizing your online store is worth it. By working on your content, social media promotion, and customer service, you’ll be much closer to getting the results you want.
Remember: Vexels helps you with every step of the process, so you can make incredible designs, create your own online store, and analyze your metrics in one place. Now your merch dreams are just a couple of clicks away!
