Congratulations! You started your online beauty business. You’ve found your favorite beauty products to private label, created your branding, and set up your online store. Now, what are the ways to increase sales online?
Before we dive into the actionable ways to increase online sales on your ecommerce dropshipping beauty store, you’ll also want to consider how you can turn those new shoppers into loyal, lifelong customers.
After all, many studies show that repeat customers are worth 10x more than one-time purchasers! Interestingly enough, once you get a customer to come back to make their second purchase, they have a 54% chance of making another purchase. Pretty desirable results!
Increasing online sales is just one side of the coin, turning them into loyal customers is the other side! Now, let’s review the 5 actionable ways to increase online sales to help you generate more profit!
1. Create product kits
As with the example shown in the picture, you can give customers an option to purchase brow gels or brow pencils separately, or order a bundle of the two products. Customers will recognize they can get the two products for a cheaper price than buying these products individually! This not only will increase your average cart values and sales, but keep your customers top of mind and offer products that work well together for their ease of use.
Bundle products that make sense together. You can create bundles with lipsticks and lip pencils, lip scrubs and lip masks, primers, and foundations. There are lots of amazing combinations of products that work well together.
Bundling products also increases efficiency for buyers because they can view your bundled products as one solution that covers all their needs!
Here is the Shopify app that we recommend for when you want to start bundling products:
- Bundles App by PickyStory – You can try their best, most advanced feature so far called Combo Products
2. Upsell and cross-sell
One of the ways to increase online sales is by upselling and cross-selling at the checkout page or when they add a product to their cart. The timing and the products that are offered are crucial here!
The greatest benefit of upselling or cross-selling products (if you do it right), is that you increase your average order value. Not only do you get to enhance your customers’ buying experience, but your business also benefits! Research from Forentrepreneurs shows that upsells and renewals cover 70-95% of revenue for the average business.
An upsell is when you offer your customers a more expensive item when they add a product to their cart or when they’re at the checkout page. For example, you can upsell your large-size makeup remover for “only $3 more!” when your customers add the travel-size makeup remover bottle. You can add value to your customers by giving them the option to choose products that will benefit them!
So how can you do this for your store? Increase average order value using top-rated Shopify apps that help you upsell and cross-sell easily. Here’s our recommended Shopify app that we recommend:
Cross-selling is when you offer complementary products to be added to the customers’ original order. A good example of cross-selling is Bite Beauty’s product page on Sephora’s website.
3. Sense of urgency
Another way to increase average order value is to create a sense of urgency. Very common sales copy in product pages include the phrases, “Hurry! There are 4 left in stock!”, “Sale ends in 24 hours!”, or “Use 15% off for this order in the next 12 minutes!”.
With a sense of urgency, it pushes consumers to act and to act NOW! Why should we create a sense of urgency? The more time people think about whether to buy something or not, they’ll most likely talk themselves out of purchasing your products.
Lastly, a sense of urgency creates intrigue, drives demand, and plays into the human side of wanting to get something before it may never be available again.
Once you let the customer slip away, it will be harder to convert them into lifetime customers. Try using these words to create urgency and the fear of missing out (ever heard of FOMO?).
- Last chance
- Limited time
- Now
- Offer expires
- Hurry
- Don’t Delay
4. Minimum order for free shipping
When you’re $7 away from free shipping, doesn’t it urge you to browse the site some more to add one more item to your cart?
I mean, who doesn’t love free shipping?
This is a successful method to increase the conversion rate and average order value and therefore increase online sales.
Consider adding a banner at the top of your website that says, “Spend $X and receive free shipping!” or a shipping calculator in your cart showing how close the customer is to your free shipping threshold.
5. Product subscriptions
Keep them coming back with product subscriptions! This option is when you offer to automatically charge and ship your customer’s future orders. This can range from weeks to months or more, depending on the cadence that makes sense for your products to be automatically replenished for your customer.
Allow your customers to decide when they would want their next order of products to come in. Whether that’s once a month, every 2 weeks, give them the opportunity to automatically have their favorite products at their doorstep before they run out!
This works well for beauty products that generally last for 1-2 months. It could be face wash, body wash, makeup remover, BB cream, or hair products.
This option gives your customers peace of mind and ensures they never run out of their favorite products from your store! With returning customers on subscription-based plans, you’ll create loyal customers and brand advocates in no time!
Conclusion
Not only do you have 5 actionable ways to increase sales for your online beauty store, you can also see how each method contributes to creating lifelong customers!
To review, we went over the methods of bundling products, upselling, and cross-selling to provide extra value for your customers. Then, we discussed how creating a sense of urgency and incentivizing your site visitors to purchase more can increase your online sales. Once they have ordered from your site once, the quality of your product, return policy, and customer service can be additional factors that encourage them to become a returning customer!
Lastly, we went over how product subscriptions give customers a peace of mind and bring more profit in the long run for your business!
Ultimately, you want to see customers come back to purchase your products again and again. Seeing a surge of one-time purchases may be rewarding at first but it’s more profitable to build a strong base of loyal customers!
Ready to start your beauty business with Blanka?
