Sales Boost Strategies

Strategies to increase sales

Date: Mar-2007

The company YYY Inc. had a website for e-commerce and was happy about their shopping cart software: the system was robust and reliable, and every now and then a new order was posted. However, the store owners believed sales could increase if they applied certain marketing strategies, just like they did in their brick & mortar stores.

When they contacted the shopping cart vendors, they were told the software was three years old and no updates had been released ever since. Their existing shopping cart could do exactly what was included in the specifications: nothing more and nothing less.

So if they wanted to apply marketing strategies they would have to hire a programmer to customize the default software. The shopping cart didn't have complete documentation, and the estimates by programmers proved too expensive to be even considered.

The store owners ultimately decided to migrate to Comersus. They hired a local Reseller's data import services and purchased a Power Pack from comersus.com

Immediately after migration they started implementing the following strategies to increase sales:

1. Newsletter: They had implemented a newsletter before, but customers seldom subscribed since they suspected they would be spammed and were afraid not to be able to unsubscribe afterwards. Comersus allowed them to create a newsletter with automatic discount distribution and self-removal for customers whenever they wished to stop receiving information. In a short period they gathered many subscribers who received news and special offers, resulting in higher sales.

2. Reward Points: Comersus allowed them to set up a reward system. They configured the system so that customers would receive 5% of every purchase as a reward for future purchases. Customers can use their points right away or choose to accumulate them. Earned points can count toward the price of products but shipping and taxes for each order must be paid separately, making the reward system a useful and profitable tool. Store owners soon realized customers were coming back for more purchases: reward points had been a great way of creating customer loyalty to their company, and to the online store in particular.

3. Gift Certificates: On the order form, customers were inquired about their birthday and sent $20 gift certificates for orders over $200. This offer had a great repercussion since it made customers feel appreciated and that they were getting personal attention.

4. Recommendations: The company's catalog is quite large, and sometimes customers don't have the time for detailed searches and getting to products they might need. Comersus includes a system of automatic recommendations. From the user menu, Comersus tracks ordering history and produces a list of recommendations sorted by several criteria: categories, prices, products on sale, etc. The company promoted this feature in one of their newsletters, and sales for the month increased 12%.

5. Affiliates: At one point they found a need to increase sales, but this time without resorting to their current customer base. They needed new customers and more traffic. Thanks to Comersus they created an affiliate program. Soon many other websites were signing up for their affiliate system. Affiliates can sign up automatically and get a URL with banners and code snippets to post on their websites. They can even log into the BackOffice to see sales details and commission payments.

6. Last Chance Listing: With this feature, the company created a list of products nearly out of stock.. At first they didn't expect this to increase sales, but soon they realized that it was appealing to customers to purchase the last items in stock. Sales of some products increased with no need to lower prices, just by informing a shortage of stock.

Conclusion: the main purpose of a shopping cart is to sell for a profit. Features related to sales boost strategies are therefore not minor: they can make the difference for a successful implementation, compared to a merely satisfactory implementation.

Related information:
1. Power Pack details at http://comersus.com/store
2. Estimate requests for data import and export at http://comersus.com/contact.html
3. Resellers list at http://comersus.com/resellers.asp