6 Ecommerce Sales Strategies For a Post-COVID World

In 2020 and 2021, it was estimated that the ecommerce industry in the United States alone grew by $218.53 billion. This was an effect of businesses and consumers being forced to go online amid stringent lockdowns and stay at home measures.

No matter if a business was a big retailer or a small homegrown business started in someone’s kitchen, every entrepreneur had to adapt and take advantage of the new opportunities in front of them.

But now as more and more countries are lowering their COVID-19 restrictions and mandates, many consumers will find themselves back—or nearly back—to old habits: window shopping and buying from actual stores.

There’s no doubt that the pandemic will have lasting effects on people’s purchasing habits, but a question does remain for many business owners:

How can you keep online sales high, even in a post-COVID world?

If you run a purely online store right now, you might notice some dips in sales as your regular customers start going out again. Or if you don’t feel this dip yet, you might wonder when it might come.

In this post, we want to show you some must-know strategies to keep your ecommerce store thriving.

6 ecommerce sales strategies for a post-COVID world

Ready to learn the best ways to keep ecommerce sales up post-COVID? Look no further than these 6 top tips.

Be mobile-friendly

The key to winning in ecommerce as the economy opens up isn’t to try to change people’s habits—it’s to adapt with them and meet customers where they’re at.

The truth about entering a post-COVID is this: people want to enjoy what they haven’t been able to in the last two years.

As a business, your goal should be to let customers do that, but also make it easy for them to still support your brand.

Even if your customers aren’t browsing the internet as much as they used to, there’s still a powerful place you can meet them where they are: their smartphone.

With so many customers now on the go, make sure it’s easy for them to place orders from your business even on mobile. Have a seamless ordering system that’s easy for customers to place orders and make payments.

Make sure your ecommerce store is able to support mobile-first transactions. When in doubt, Cococart is one of the best platforms that does just this.

Customers are able to shop from the convenience of their smartphones with a quick-loading website, and they’re able to save their data—name, address, even payment methods—for lightning fast repeat purchases from your shop.

Use retargeting ads

With customers being more on the go, their attention to their devices isn’t as long as it used to be. In fact, it’s normal that many customers will browse an ecommerce store, look through specific products, then fail to check out.

When this happens, you want to remind them about what products they were considering. Enter retargeting ads.

How this works is that you can track the people who’ve been on your ecommerce store, then show them ads on sites they visit later, say, Facebook or Instagram.

It couldn’t be simpler to implement this strategy using Cococart. You only need to connect your ads account via Facebook Pixel, then start running your ads.

You might like: 8 Huge Mistakes That Could Be Hurting Your Sales on Instagram

Create exclusive coupons for online orders

One of the best ecommerce sales tips post-COVID is to make your ecommerce store stand out from any of your physical outlets or chains.

Encourage customers to checkout by offering exclusive coupon codes they can only use in your online shop. Run these promotions sparingly though; you don’t want to only attract customers looking for a bargain!

With Cococart, you can create custom coupon codes and support loads of different use cases, such as:

Offering discounts on entire orders or specific products
Adding minimum purchase amounts before a customer is able to apply a coupon
Setting time bound coupons with an expiration to increase urgency
Creating a limited redemption coupon for only the first X number of users

Launch online-only products and bundles

You don’t have to stop at just coupon codes. You can introduce exclusive offers like online-only products and bundles customers can’t get anywhere else.

There are a few ways you might want to try this.

For example, try launching an online-exclusive product before you roll it out to any physical shops or events. This encourages customers to shop online, and when they see your entire catalog, they might purchase more than a single item!

Along that vein, you might even try introducing a bundle only available through your online shop. This might be best if you don’t want to introduce new products just yet but want to still offer an irresistible deal.

If you also have physical locations, or join in-person events to sell your products, you can entice shoppers to visit your online store by telling them about these exclusive offers.

Get “phygital”

Even if you don’t have a physical location just yet, there’s still a way to meet your customers where they’re at in a post-COVID world.

As the economy opens up, there are many opportunities to sell your products in physical locations. For instance, you might join in-person events, bazaars, weekend markets, and conventions to get the word out about your business.

You can level up these efforts as well by making sure you promote your ecommerce store at these events. Encourage first-time buyers from these conventions and markets to become repeat customers by showing them how to buy your products online.

Get Inspired: How a Single Home Baker Launched Two Physical Shops in the Pandemic

Elevate digital marketing strategies

Finally, one must-know sales strategy to keep sales high post-COVID? Level up your digital marketing.

As customers’ habits are reverting back to a mix of online and offline, it becomes a huge challenge to get their attention—much less, keep it.

Because of this, try new digital marketing strategies you might not have tried before. Here are some things you might want to try, if you haven’t already:

Create giveaway contests to reach new people and encourage community
Run ads to your ecommerce store
Host live selling events or Ask Me Anythings (AMAs) on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube
Get active on Instagram Stories
Explore new platforms for marketing, like TikTok

Keep online sales high post-COVID

If you feel a dip in sales as customers go offline, don’t panic. Just as your business adapted during COVID, so too can you adapt post-COVID. Be sure to follow the tips we mention above, and commit to learning from them so that you can start seeing those sales numbers go up.

FAQ

How much does it cost to start a home based business?

If you're starting your business in Singapore, you'll need to register your business with ACRA. The one-time registration fee costs $300.

Other factors to consider include the cost of your ingredients and raw materials, as well as the cost of setting up your website online.

Read this article to learn more about the cost of starting your small business.

Can I start a business if I have no working capital?

There are lots of business ideas to consider if you have low or no capital at the moment.

Print-On-Demand tshirts, freelance services and digital products are great businesses to start. All you need is a laptop to list your products and services online!

Read this article to find out how you can start a business even if you have $0 capital.

How do I start a home-based business?

First, you'll need to check if the business idea you have meets governmental requirements. If you're based in Singapore, you'll need to visit the URA website to learn about home-based business limitations.

If you've already made the necessary checks and have registered your business with ACRA, you can proceed to set up your home office!

Read this complete guide on everything you need to know about starting a home-based business in Singapore

Your Success is Our Success

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