17 Tips for Increasing Sales on Your Website
Whether you're running a SaaS company, selling coaching services, or want to scale sales for your agency, selling a “great” product or service is helpful—but it’s not enough.
You also have to attract and drive buying decisions (note how I didn’t say “buyers”). Otherwise you will be out-competed by an average product or service that has a great marketing funnel behind it.
In 2014, I launched a new SaaS product I’d coded from scratch. It was genius! We were covered by TechCrunch and other major media... We earned sales, but then I experienced what Gail Glassman (co-founder of Constant Contact) called the “Long, Slow SaaS Ramp of Death.”
In other words: monthly packages trickling in at $20 and $50 per month weren’t going to pay the bills. Hard lesson (“reality-brick” to the face).
For professional service businesses, the problem is often the opposite: more cash upfront, but that leads to more work, which leads you to neglect marketing for a time, which ultimately leads to a feast-or-famine cycle.
The solution is to achieve flow in your website funnel and continuously unlock growth barriers that are holding back your sales conversions.
So here’s a list of 17 tactical, research-backed tips to help you do exactly that. This is what we’re covering in today’s article (and video)—
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #1: Have A Clear Value Proposition and CTAs
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #2: Avoid Saying “We’re Awesome” — Do This Instead.
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #3: Free Trials… But Keep Them Short and Sweet
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #4: Blog About Their Problems (and Your Solutions)
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #5: Onboarding Can Be a Deciding Purchasing Factor… Where Might Yours Be Killing Revenue?
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #6: Target Your Audience… Or Miss Them Altogether
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #7: Make New Friends (With Influencers)
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #8: SEO Isn’t Magic — And It Works
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #9: Use Automations (Carefully) To Optimize Your Website Experience
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #10: Be Clear, Concise, and Honest With Your Website Sales Copy
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #11: The Easy-ish Thing You Aren’t Doing Enough Of (Mobile Optimization)
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #12: Emails Are Cheap ($42 Returned for Every $1 Spent)
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #13: Use Lead Magnets To Showcase Value (Offer Something Valuable For Free)
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #14: Optimize Your Website With the Customer In Mind (Law of Visibility)
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #15: A/B Test Your Pricing
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #16: Use What’s Trending To Your Advantage
- Increasing Website Sales Tip #17: If Website Sales Aren’t Happening Here, Look Elsewhere
Let’s transform your website from a lonely desert store into a bustling, online bazaar oasis.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #1: Have A Clear Value Proposition and CTAs
First off, you cannot increase your website sales if people don’t know exactly what they're buying or find the way to buy it.
A clear value proposition helps visitors understand your product or service and why they should care. Plus, it shows them how your product is different and better than others out there. Clarity here is key.
Remember, making your value shine helps you sell more.
Do the following for a better value proposition:
- Keep It short and Sweet: Your value proposition should be no more than a few sentences long.
- Keep It Simple: Avoid jargon and technical terms that your target audience might not understand.
- Highlight the Benefits: State the benefits, not uses. What problems does your software solve? How will it make your customers’ lives easier?
- Make It Scannable: Your value proposition should be easy for visitors to understand at a glance.
- Consider adding a “without”: What does your target customer or client get to avoid by investing in your solution? For AutoGrow, our’s is “without the headaches of hiring” and this pain-point is a bullseye for our target clients.
And have a straightforward call to action on the homepage, and on each subsequent sub-page. For example, use “Sign-up”, “Proceed to Checkout”, etc. Make the button that highlights this call to action big, bold, and a color that people will notice (like red or orange) and not blend in to the rest of your site.
Check out Uber Eats’ website below. It’s clear, concise, and offers value. Simple. It also has a short, two-word CTA in a different color than the background.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #2: Avoid Saying “We’re Awesome” — Do This Instead
If you want to sell more of your product online, it’s time to play show-and-tell with your data.
B2B buyers love numbers. They want to know how your product will save them money, boost their revenue, or make them more productive.
So, don’t just tell them; show them! Use case studies, testimonials, social proof, reviews, and stats — like this one: 82% of Americans say they seek recommendations from friends and family before purchasing.
Or this one: 83% of people trust a business more if it has reviews on its page.
Remember, data speaks louder than words, so let your data do the talking.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #3: Free Trials… But Keep Them Short and Sweet
A great way to boost your website sales is by offering a free trial or demo. People need a test-drive before buying it. But remember, keep it short and sweet.
You must balance getting people in the door and getting enough money from them to keep the door open for others (Business 101). Too short a free trial, and it won’t be worth it. Too long, and people will use it and run.
Statistics from Invesp show that SaaS companies get 68% more new business from offering free trials or a freemium version of their product than companies that don’t.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #4: Blog About Their Problems (and Your Solutions)
Boosting your website sales can be as easy as starting a blog. But not just any blog. Your blog should be like a superhero, swooping in to save your customers from their problems.
Write about the challenges your customers face. Then show them how your product is the perfect sidekick to help them overcome these challenges. It’s like giving them a map that leads straight to your solution.
On our (human, not AI) AutoGrow copywriting team, we adhere to the “you” rule. Two of the most engaging words you can use in copy is “you” and “yours.” When writing your blogs, use these two words to make your audience feel like you’re speaking directly to them.
Good writing is understood by the reader. Great writing makes the reader feel understood.
Blogging about how your company can help your customers gives them the information they need to make a purchasing decision right on your website. A study by HubSpot surveyed 2,600 business and found that businesses that blog about solutions get 126% more leads. So start blogging about how to help your customers (and make sure you have CTAs throughout).
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #5: Onboarding Support Can Be a Deciding Purchasing Factor… Where Might Yours Be Killing Revenue?
Roll out the red carpet for your customers with top-notch support and onboarding for increased website sales.
Slack is an excellent example of a company that goes above and beyond with onboarding their customers.
It starts right from signup when the images change in the background to reflect what the customer is inputting. Then the “Slackbot” walks them through the platform to get started. Finally, it doesn’t drag the user through every feature. Instead, it introduces them to the features when the user hovers their mouse around the “empty states.”
Very easy. Very smooth for the customer. Before they know it, they’re fully into Slack.
To get a similar experience on you site, be quick to answer questions, solve problems, and maybe even throw in a few high-fives (virtually, of course). Welcome messages, product tours, checklists, and product bars will all help, too.
63% of customers say that good onboarding support can be the deciding factor in their purchase. Don’t skimp on customer service. Ever.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #6: Target Your Audience… Or Miss Them Altogether
Boosting your website sales is a bit like archery. You’ve got to aim your marketing arrow at a specific target. That means saying no to everyone else and a big yes to your targeted group of potential customers.
“Going niche” is cliche, and targeting is not exactly that, or nor am I saying that niching does not work. Rather, you need to cut down in some practical ways who you are selling to and who you are not.
Moreover, this needs to be clear in your sales copy. If people who are not in your target audience are not actively turned off by your content, there’s a high probability, based on my experience, you are going too broad.
The consequence of this is that many of the people who most align with your problem / solution offering may not have this experience: “Oh hey, yeah, that’s me, I have that problem, let me read more” — on your page.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #7: Make New Friends (With Influencers)
You can partner with influencers in a variety of ways.
One easy way is to simply beg… Another easy and more self-respecting way is to give an influencer (with distribution to your target audience) a free trial or some other exclusive freebie related to your core offer.
The hope and expectation is that they will often spread the word about your product, which leads to more sales on your website.
You can increase your brand awareness, generate leads, and even drive sales with influencer marketing.
Why does this work?
Influencer marketing increases your site’s overall conversion rates because it changes the context (frame) through which leads are coming to your website.
In other words, the traffic is higher quality and converts better because someone who knows your brand / product / service and who already has a relationship with your target audience is recommending you. That influencer is basically a trusted bridge connecting the two of you.
Some great examples of tech companies using influencers to boost sales and growth are Slack, HubSpot, and Salesforce. They’ve all partnered with various technology, marketing, and business influencers. These influencers then create content about the company to raise awareness about its benefits.
Also, next year, marketers in the U.S. alone are expected to spend $4.6 billion on influencer marketing.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #8: SEO — It Isn’t Magic, and It Works
To increase your website sales, prioritizing search engine optimization (SEO) is essential. Use SEO tactics (see below) on your landing pages so that Google knows where to send people when they ask it a question. This alone will get you cost-effective (basically free) traffic to your website.
(Note: on the infographic data above: the “1000%” number seems inaccurate in my experience. Social media does drive less sustained and less overall organic traffic to most of our websites and our clients’ sites, but 1000% seems too high. The other 2 numbers seem accurate.)
Effective SEO strategies include:
- Extensive keyword research
- Adding keywords to your title tags, headers, and meta descriptions
- Creating high-quality content
- Getting backlinks to your content from high-quality websites
- Maintaining consistency across platforms
- Utilizing long-tail keywords
- Optimizing your website for mobile devices
- Leveraging social media marketing
- Bonus Tip for Stronger Revenue Growth From SEO: Having clear CTAs throughout your content (every piece of content is an opportunity to drive leads and sales — at AutoGrow, we have numerous CTAs offering extra value to readers on each blog page, for instance.)
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #9: Use Automations (Carefully) To Optimize Your Website Experience
We are living in the age of AI now.
AI allows you to do certain things faster and more efficiently, but be careful not to sacrifice quality for speed.
A perfect example of this is ChatGPT. Yes, it can write coherent words much faster than a human. But do those words offer value, context, and thoughtful and empathetic insight?
The result of AI tech like ChatGPT is leading to an explosion of content online…
And yet, that increase in content volume for the vast majority pumping out AI copy and content does not lead to more conversions, nor more traffic.
If anything, the marketing value of having a professional human behind the keyboard has only increased in value now.
Part of the reason is that today ChatGPT lacks much awareness and ability that humans have. It has no sense of time and if asked to predict the last letter in a sentence before it writes it, it cannot do it.
For best results, I suggest writing your own more purposeful and meaningful content (more on that below) or have a team of human pros write / collaborate with you on it.
However, you can use AI in other ways besides mediocre content writing, (which too many are FOMO-ing their way into now with all the hype).
AI chatbots, for instance, are a great way to quickly answer customer questions and improve your website customer experience.
You can program chatbots to answer your more common questions, book appointments, take orders, and more. Now you have more time to focus on more important aspects of your business, like answering the phone if someone has a question the chatbot can’t answer (always have a human option). Or writing better copy than ChatGPT spits out…
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #10: Be Clear, Concise, and Honest With Your Website Sales Copy
There’s a fine line between wanting to market your product and bending the truth to do it, as AI for instance often will do (this is what AI developers call “hallucinating”).
All of a sudden, you’re using too many words to get your point across and it sounds like you’re trying too hard or the ideas don’t flow or, worse, facts are being invented on the fly..
As mentioned, for increasing your website’s sales conversions, you want to avoid relying heavily on AI writing tools.
They are good at brainstorming, checking your spelling, summarizing, but connecting and selling to customers empathetically?
Nope, not yet.
The time or money invested to write copy that resonates with your audience on a human level will yield better results at this time.
Moreover, you want to build trust with your audience (do you trust AI to speak for you?). Today’s consumer (84% of millennials, according to WordStream) already relies heavily on user-generated content to make purchases. This tells me that if you make untrue or “incongruent” claims about what you’re selling (or if you start talking about a benefit but quickly flip straight to selling), they will instantly head to the next website.
Be straightforward, honest, and approachable.
Here’s an example:
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #11: The Easy-ish Thing You Aren’t Doing Enough Of (Mobile Optimization)
Boosting your sales can be as easy as making your website a little easier on the eyes and brain. Having your customers easily find what they are looking for and being engaged with your content means they will go farther down your sales funnel.
For example, your website can be responsive, (yay) but is this enough? Have you gone thru it and put yourself in the shoes of potential customers in experiencing it through their eyes on a tablet or phone?
Sometimes CTAs can be hidden, or text may appear out of order, or the load time experience can be vastly different compared to a desktop / laptop computer.
And on that latter point, we recently noticed that Google applied a temporary penalty to our site. We had an image animation on our blog pages which it said took too long to load. So we optimized it, and now our traffic is rising again.
Moreover, research shows that you get a double win in this way: not only more traffic from higher SEO rankings, but typically a higher conversion rate too.
A good reason to invest in U/X: 67% of mobile users say they’re more likely to buy from you if your site is mobile-friendly. Making your website easy for people to see on all devices is a simple and effective way to increase website sales.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #12: Emails Are Cheap ($42 Returned For Every $1 Spent)
Boosting your website sales can be as easy as sending out some stellar (relevant, well-written) emails.
To make your emails shine, target them to the right people, personalize your messages, and offer something valuable.
Here are some stats to back up using email to grow your business online:
- 89% of marketers use email marketing as their primary lead generation source
- The average open-rate in 2022 was 19.66%
- 77% of B2B buyers prefer connecting through email
- Emails acquired 40 times more customers for businesses than Facebook and Twitter
And they’re cheap. How long does it take to create an email campaign? Less than a day. Then you can send it out to thousands of people. In fact, the average rate of return for emails can get up to $42 for every one dollar spent.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #13: Use Lead Magnets To Showcase (Offer Something Valuable For Free)
Lead magnets are an excellent way to increase your website sales. By providing something of value (5 day email course, a checklist, an exclusive template, a webinar video) at no cost, such as a guide or a discount, you can encourage visitors to share their contact details.
Lead magnets increase your sales because of the principle of reciprocity.
If you provide me with a solution to a problem I have, I’m much more open to any sort of paid offer you have. Especially since:
“Hey, the free thing was that good? How great is the paid thing going to be?”
There should be useful, actionable information in your lead magnet that customers can use. It can be as simple as a 1 page checklist, or as long as a 5 hour webinar or a 100 page ebook.
Either way, again, your goal is to deliver enough value so that their last thought is:,
“Hey, this company looks like they know what they’re talking about. Maybe I should save some time and energy and use their services instead of doing this myself.”
Consider this: Studies show that lead magnets can boost website conversions by 50% (ClickyDrip), only 60% of markers use them (My Codeless Website), and 63% of businesses cite generating leads and traffic as their No. 1 problem (WPForms).
So by investing in creating at least 1 quality lead magnet, you’re likely to be ahead of much of your competition. Success is usually easier than any of us think…
Pro Tip #1: If your lead magnet is so good you’d feel confident charging $$$ it, then (assuming your copy on the offer is good) you’re going to get a great conversion rate. For instance, we used to charge $49 for our info product, called the 28 Funnel Diagram Pack. But a few months ago, this info product which took 100-150 hours of work to create (and years of experience with funnels / digital marketing), we decided to offer it for free to our audience. It converts way better than any other lead magnet we’ve offered to date. The runner-up was a simple checklist.
Pro Tip #2: Think strategically about your Thank You page which comes after leads opt in to your lead magnet. An effective thank-you-page will greatly increase your website’s sales. For instance, you could deliver the lead magnet there and/or use the opportunity to make a special offer–or something as simple as booking a call for further help to implement what’s in the lead magnet.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #14: Optimize Your Website With the Customer In Mind (Law Of Visibility)
You know your website backwards and forwards. The real question is if someone who’s never been on it before feels at ease with making a purchase…
An excellent tactic to help customers feel at home is making simple adjustments to the look and feel of your website to make it easier for them to navigate through. These small tweaks also make it easier to get them into your sales funnel, which is the whole point.
One of the most important (number 1, actually) Laws of Sales Funnel Physics is the Law of Visibility. This law basically says that if people can’t see what you want them to click on, they won’t.
We talked about your value proposition and CTA being visible and distinguished from the rest of the copy, but there’s lots more you can do to improve the customer experience on your website, just by making things more visible.
- Have a progress bar in the checkout process that shows how close the customer is to being finished.
- How about a navigation side bar that follows users down the page so your most important CTAs or pages are constantly in view?
- Add a pop up that captures email addresses or asks why they are leaving (bouncing) so quickly so you can improve your site further.
Make sure you A/B test your website changes to see which work best. Which brings us to the next increasing your website sales tactic…
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #15: A/B Test Your Pricing
Some pages on your website matter a lot, and some matter very little.
Your pricing page is one of your highest points of leverage on your website or funnel in general.
Given the state of the economy, maximizing the conversion-power of your pricing page is a big growth opportunity for you..
You also need to balance different considerations all on one page, like competitive pricing with profitability, or branding (what does your price say about your offer).
Simply increase the visibility / ease of reaching your pricing page (ideally 1 click away from any other page on your site) if often a quick win—it should be as obvious as a neon sign at night
(note: if for some reason your goal is to crater your conversion rate, well then not having prices on your pricing page is a massive website design mistake, but I digress…).
Consider A/B testing different pricing structures to see what works best. Making one simple change using the “Law of Repetition” increased our pricing page conversion rate by 13% (see link for details).
If you do not have enough traffic for an AB test (many don’t and that’s ok), then consider a sequence test mixed with user-testing surveys / feedback / 5-min on page videos.
Data from Invespcro says 60% of companies find A/B testing to be highly valuable for optimization conversions. It also means reduced bounce rates, higher customer satisfaction, and less risk of disrupting your cash flow.
Use VWO or Google Analytics to do it.
However, some people argue against it, citing that it’s unfair one person has to pay a certain price and others have to pay more for the sake of testing. They also argue that once you decide on a price, you’ll have one group of people paying an outdated price, and it will take longer to set up.
To be clear, there is a lot you can do to A/B Test your pricing that doesn’t involve saying “Widget X is $30 today” and then “Widget X is $20 tomorrow”.
You can change the page’s presentation, add or subtract elements like we did (results / video above), or test adding new less expensive or more expensive packages.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #16: Use What’s Trending To Your Advantage
The world is changing every day.
The surest way to fail is to change your strategy for growth just as frequently.
However, completely ignoring the “evolving reality” that your company exists is no recipe for success either.
By staying up to date on news, market changes, and new knowledge published in different media channel’s you’re less likely to be blind-sided by any big change.
For instance, some of the following may sound obvious but it’ll help you keep your ear to the ground with a continuous 360 stream of qualitative and quantitative data on what’s happening that can affect the conversion and sales rates you’re seeing on your website:
- Read industry blogs
- Attend virtual webinars
- Read books and whitepapers
- Attend local events and conventions
- Chat with other companies and entrepreneurs or marketers in your industry.
- Use AI for chatbots and shallow-research (but don’t trust it 100% ever),
Above all, ensure you promote your website to “draft” off the latest trends so that most people can see your content. The popularity of social media and the ways we view content change constantly. What’s hot one minute is obsolete the next. For instance, many marketers today reference memes in their social media posts and ad campaigns.
For instance, 90% of marketers now use short-form videos this year (and 21% did it for the first time), making it the marketing element with the highest ROI. They saw the trend and jumped on the bandwagon.
In marketing, new trendy-tactics like this often work really well for a while early, and then lots of marketers jump in, adopt the tactic, and it works less and less well.
Increase Your Website Sales Tip #17: If Website Sales Aren’t Happening Here, Look Elsewhere
If you're applying enough of the tactics and best practices above to grow your sales conversions on your website, but still not seeing enough progress, then… Let’s reassess.
Something I like to think about is that, objectively, many times 24/7/365 millions and billions of dollars are changing hands across a vibrant range of goods and services.
This is helpful because if something isn’t going right with your funnel’s conversion rates over a sustained period, then it’s more like that you’re experiencing funnel drift and/OR the market is shrinking or moved and you simply need to adapt to that new circumstance.
(see bullet points under trends for how to stay up to date and not get blind-sided)
Under this circumstance, you have to assess:
- How difficult is it to adapt to this shift (or funnel drift)?
- Is it worth it?
- Should you consider re-targeting to a new market or new niche?
- How might you re-purpose or reframe what you are offering to solve problems that adjacent market segments have?
Global expansion in eCommerce has been flourishing for years. There is no sign of it slowing down either (see chart below). Where there wasn’t a market one or two years ago, there may be a market now. A market shrinking in size in one part of the economy doesn’t mean those people / companies go away…
They likely reappear somewhere else with new or similar needs.
Further, depending on where you’re at and what the data says, consider if this isn’t actually just a “plateau” based on current marketing channels.
Expanding into a new country, demographic, or platform could be the answer. You may have to make a separate landing page or even a new brand, or you can easily translate your website into different languages.
Conclusion
Increasing your website sales and conversion rates is largely something you can control. That is, if you are targeting the right solution for the right market and exploiting the tactics and best practices listed above.
Note how some of them happen on your website in the literal sense, while others are off-site but translating to higher conversion rates ultimately on your website (e.g. influencer marketing).
Let’s quickly recap:
- Tip #1: Have A Clear Value Proposition and CTAs
- Tip #2: Avoid Saying “We’re Awesome” — Do This Instead.
- Tip #3: Free Trials… But Keep Them Short and Sweet
- Tip #4: Blog About Their Problems (and Your Solutions)
- Tip #5: Onboarding Can Be a Deciding Purchasing Factor… Where Might Yours Be Killing Revenue?
- Tip #6: Target Your Audience… Or Miss Them Altogether
- Tip #7: Make New Friends (With Influencers)
- Tip #8: SEO Isn’t Magic — And It Works
- Tip #9: Use Automations (Carefully) To Optimize Your Website Experience
- Tip #10: Be Clear, Concise, and Honest With Your Website Sales Copy
- Tip #11: Make Your Website Accessible To Everyone (Especially on Mobile)
- Tip #12: Emails Are Cheap ($42 Returned for Every $1 Spent)
- Tip #13: Use Lead Magnets To Showcase Value (Offer Something Valuable For Free)
- Tip #14: Optimize Your Website With the Customer In Mind (Law Of Visibility)
- Tip #15: A/B Test Your Pricing
- Tip #16: Use What’s Trending To Your Advantage
- Tip #17: If Website Sales Aren’t Happening Here, Look Elsewhere
Remember, in the digital marketing world, the only constant is change. So stay flexible, and watch the dollars, euros, pounds, yen, and rupees roll in online.
I’d love to hear what you think about these tips. What have you done to grow your sales and how were the results? Let me know in the comments.
Until next time…
Keep AutoGrowin’, stay focused.
Image Bibliography
- https://www.ubereats.com/ca
- https://thrivemyway.com/landing-page-stats/
- https://www.invespcro.com/blog/saas-customer-acquisition/
- https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5519/blogging-businesses-experience-126-higher-lead-growth-than-non-blogging-businesses.aspx#:~:text=The%20answer%20is%20yes.,than%20those%20who%20don%27t.
- https://www.wyzowl.com/onboarding-user-retention/
- https://www.expertmarket.com/digital-marketing/content-marketing-statistics
- https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-statistics/
- https://growfusely.com/blog/saas-enterprise-seo/
- https://www.saastr.com/it-takes-about-10-years-to-get-to-a-billion-acquisition/
- https://www.business2community.com/marketing/numbers-dont-lie-2016-nielsen-study-revealed-referrals-01477256#V8TIQh7C1AlbMhf4.97 , https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/copywriting-examples
- https://www.interactiv4.com/en/conversion-optimization-tactics-for-ecommerce/
- https://financesonline.com/email-marketing-software-statistics/
- https://www.webfx.com/blog/web-design/user-experience-matters-marketing/
- https://wpforms.com/online-form-statistics-facts/
- https://blog.hubspot.com/website/engagement-metrics
- https://www.optimizely.com/optimization-glossary/ab-testing/
- https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/erp/saas-metrics.shtml, https://www.zippia.com/advice/saas-industry-statistics/
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/state-of-content-marketing-infographic
- https://www.myos.com/en-blog/expanding-business-to-new-markets-for-e-commerce-growth
