4 Quick Things You Can Do To Boost Sales Right Now

October 8, 2015

Boosting profits and sales is all about finding simple, easy, quick wins. You don’t always need to plough extra money into marketing and advertising. Nor do you need to alter your business plan. Sometimes, all it takes is a few small tweaks to unlock huge numbers of extra sales. We know this because we’ve seen it happen. We’ve tried them for ourselves.
In this post, we’ll show you five quick things you can do to boost sales. Each of them can be completed within just a few hours. All you need to do is get into your website, and make a couple of subtle changes. The results are surprisingly effective, and used by all the best companies on the internet.
Make the checkout process faster
Some statistics show that up to 60% of potential customers will abandon their cart. Even after adding something to their basket, your customers will often fail to carry through with the purchase. A quick and easy way to boost sales is to make sure as many of those sales go through as possible. That means making the checkout process as simple and fast as possible. For that reason, we always advise using a postcode address finder API. It’s a simple toolkit that automatically finds your customers address when they type in their postcode. Little things like this make the checkout process super quick.
Reduce the number of items on sale
A famous experiment at Stanford University proved once and for all that customers don’t always respond to a large choice. Customers were presented with two different shop layouts. One had 28 different types of jam on offer. The other had just six. The study showed that the layout with just six different types of jam secured the most amount of sales. You can apply a similar technique on your website. Reduce the number of items on sale, and you’ll instantly boost profits. Customers often feel overwhelmed when presented with too many products. This is a particularly good technique for mobile and tablet customers, when you’ve only got a small amount of room to work with.
Upsell
Did you know that you can make the most of each and every sale by upselling? When a customer is checking out, offer them a discount on a related item. Or perhaps you package up the item with another similar product. You’ll notice how Amazon and other sellers always include a ‘related products’ line to entice further purchases. You can do the same, and always try to secure an extra purchase from every customer.
Discounts and sales
One of the most effective ways to boost profits is with a sale or discount. It’s a tried-and-tested method that almost always works. It’s great if you need to shift some existing stock, or just give your profit margin a quick jump start. Try running the sale for a limited time period, or putting a time limit on your discount codes. That will create a real incentive for people to get online and make a quick purchase. It could be just what you need to give your sales a kick.
That’s all for now, folks. But, don’t forget to check back regularly for more insightful tricks and techniques.

Mark Asquith

That British podcast guy, Mark is co-founder of Captivate.fm, the world's only growth-oriented podcast host. A Harvard, TEDx, Podcast Movement and Podfest speaker (amongst many more!), he's a wildly approachable Brit and Star Wars/DC Comics geek.

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