Boost online sales: 10 eCommerce generation tips & tricks 

Lead generation is a nuanced and delicate task that requires you to combine all of your best efforts to come up with a winning strategy to boost online sales. 

A lead is someone who displays the potential and some degree of willingness to purchase some of your products or services. 

In this article, we’re going to:

1) Explain the concept of ‘lead generation,’

2) List the most useful lead generation tips & strategies, and

3) Figure out a rather discombobulating question: How come RedBull and GoPro co-branding are such a winning combination?

Plenty to cover in the passages below, so let’s get right into it! 

What is lead generation in eCommerce? 

There is a major difference between a lead and a satisfied customer. A lead is only a gentle bud with some potential, while a buying customer is a fully-blossomed flower that gives you money. 

To follow through with this genius analogy, getting a plant from its budding phase to a full blossom means careful nurturing (marketing and ease of access) and fending off predators (ensuring the competition doesn’t get to them first).

This is often easier said than done. Consider the following scenario: 

You’ve been bending yourself backward to deliver a killer presentation of all the latest German-made bells and whistles installed in the quiet, fast, and polar bear-friendly upcoming all-electric BMW i4 Gran Coupe.

Your audience, however, is made out of minimum wage workers who are just back from a major public protest against the poor state of the economy in their third-world country.

Upon hearing the price of the vehicle, a part of which is directed toward saving baby seals and plastic-straw-riddled sea turtles, rather than signing up for your automotive waiting list, the members of your audience would probably rather just use the brochures as projectiles.

Alternatively, they might elect to follow in the shoeless footsteps of Muntadhar al-Zaidi and throw their shoes at you the way the famous Iraqi journalist did, with George W. Bush as the target. 

(If such an unfortunate scenario befalls your presentation, you better hope that you have as good, if not better, ducking skills than the 43rd president of the U.S.) 

You see, even if you do everything right in terms of marketing, the wrong choice of audience can single-handedly torpedo your campaign. 

Generating leads requires a long-term multi-pronged marketing approach that will put your brand under the spotlight and facilitate the access your customers have to your products.

In the passages below, we’ll talk about how you can achieve this in the context of an eCommerce business.

(Spoiler alert: It’s considerably different and potentially more fun than lead generation and boosting sales for a business with physical premises that needs manual processes like negotiating with potencial clients in person, managing contracts and other tedious tasks) 

Without further ado, here’s the deal. 

Why is lead generation important for eCommerce? 

Lead generation is crucial for any business, whether you’re starting your business selling artichokes on the side of the street or aiming to attract high-end clientele for luxury products like Bugatti cars.

However, once you have a prospective buyer, it’s essential to manage the subsequent steps effectively, including legal contracts and contract lifecycle management to boost online sales.

Implementing contract management practices, such as utilizing contract automation, contract templates, and contract lifecycle management software, can streamline the process and ensure compliance. 

Furthermore, having a privacy policy template in place is crucial to protect customer data and maintain trust.

By integrating these elements into your lead generation strategy, you can not only attract prospects but also establish a solid foundation for long-term customer relationships.

It enables your business to thrive and sustainably support your employees and boost online sales.

Creating your ideal lead: Generating the right leads for eCommerce 

Materializing your ideal lead into existence means throwing everything you’ve got and the kitchen sink at the great wall of online marketing to boost online sales, and then seeing what sticks.

Ecommerce email marketing is a vital component of this strategy, ensuring that targeted email campaigns reach potential customers at the right time with compelling offers and personalized content, driving conversions and nurturing relationships.

To minimize the money you spend in this pursuit and the energy you and your team expends, you can follow a trail that others explored before you. 

Depending on the eCommerce niche you’re in, you might want to put more emphasis on certain parts of a lead campaign over others. 

For example, if you are developing a game, making sure it’s mobile-friendly is considerably more important than trying to find a celebrity to promote it.

That said, the two are not mutually exclusive—if you can pull off both, go right ahead!

Here is a brief list of some ways in which you can whittle down a big ole slab of a potential audience to one sharp point of highly-prospective leads: 

1. Write valuable content

This one is rather self-explanatory. Telling your story will immediately draw the attention of curious Internet browsers.

If you do it well and the content is engaging enough, a certain number of readers will inevitably stick around for the next post.

(By the way, posts and updates can take any form, not just literary—you can make videos, infographics, catchy jingles, or whatever content you feel might capture the attention of a prospective buyer.) 

2. Use cookies

If the user accepts them, cookies can be a great way to access the general info of the visitor and pitch them a product or service—completely legally! 

3. Establish a social following

eCommerce sites thrive on social media. Whether it’s buying a pair of air pods from a drop-shipping Instagram influencer, or booking a spa session via Facebook, a strong social following can generate a ton of leads. 

4. Offer Deals & Discounts

In exchange for an email address, offering leads some sort of discount for their next purchase can be a great way to hook a potential future customer. 

5. Incorporate SEO in your content

Enriching your content with search engine-friendly keywords will make the right kind of people find you easier. 

6. Optimize for mobile devices

Whether you’re making a mobile game or running a local burger joint that highlights peptides in menu items for health-conscious customers, making your new racing arcade available on Android and ensuring your fast-food app is functional across platforms is a must nowadays.

7. Consider setting up partnerships

Last but not least, partnerships with influencers, celebrities, and other brands can boost sales and bring in a massive new wave of buyers. Epson + Shaq, GoPro + RedBull, the list of successful symbioses goes on. 

10 eCommerce lead generation tips & strategies 

Now that you have some idea of what broad measures to incorporate into your marketing strategy to funnel the most promising leads toward checkout.

It’s time to go over some tips and strategies that you can use to start generating leads in an organized and long-term way. 

More than anything, getting leads means having patience and displaying consistency with your brand’s messaging, as well as professionalism and care in the way you deal with your existing customers to boost online sales (who might recommend you to their friends and acquaintances). 

Here are some of the proven ways to increase lead generation if you’re running an eCommerce business. 

1. Use blogs 

Other than restocking the shelves, giving you the change, and ordering more items for sale, the role of sales vendors also extends to providing information about the products and helping the customer make a choice. 

In a bodega, it’s the shop owner’s aunt with an apron helping a guy pick the best type of detergent. 

For an online-bound, eCommerce business, blogging can cover a big chunk of the troubleshooting and info-giving for the customers which can boost online sales.

A well-written blog can both entertain and inform customers about the products or services you’re providing. 

2. Display clever CTA’s

The CTA that only says ‘add to cart’ or no CTA at all is a potential missed opportunity for securing more involvement from the customer down the road. 

One of the best strategies for CTA in this respect would be to attempt to snatch the buyer’s email as they’re about to complete the purchase.

You can use a form tool like Salesforce forms to get the name and email of your prospects. Or you can use one of the newer pitch deck creators that embed both signup forms or calendars to book the next meeting.

Other than the checkout shopping cart page, there are also other places within your website where you can make good use of a clever CTA. 

If the CTA is on the homepage, you can say something along the lines of: Join our newsletter community now! 

For a product landing page CTA, you can use something like: Complete this quiz to find your perfect product match! 

The checkout page, where the buyers are completing the purchase, can be the perfect option for a quick email-grabbing CTA.

Try this one: Get alerts on our future discounts! Or Join our loyalty program!

3. Optimize product pages for SEO 

Use relevant keywords in product titles, descriptions, and meta tags to ensure that your product pages are optimized for search engines.

This will increase the visibility of your website in search results, bringing more organic traffic and potential customers to your online store.

A. Product title optimization: Naturally incorporate your target keywords into the product titles. Make sure the titles are descriptive, brief, and appealing to search engines as well as potential buyers.

B. Optimize URL Structure: Make sure your product URLs are clean, simple, and contain important keywords. Excessive numbers or parameters in URLs may make them less search engine friendly.

C. Image Optimization: Use descriptive file names and alt tags that incorporate keywords related to the product to optimize product photographs. 

D. Page Loading Speed: Enhance page loading speed by compressing pictures, optimizing code, and utilizing a trustworthy hosting provider. 

4. Retarget returning visitors 

Retargeting the customers that already visited your website and completed a purchase can be a great way to facilitate another purchase. 

Through the use of cookies or analytics, you can predict what product or groups of products a buyer typically looks for. 

Once you know this, you can customize their feed so they get offered products that are in their price range, that have features they are attracted to, or that they are more likely to buy based on some other parameter. 

5. Use social media 

One of the rather odd (but unsurprising given the attention span of Internet users nowadays) hurdles that many eCommerce business face is buyers giving up on checkout because they are prompted to make an account. 

To bypass this, many marketers simply allow for guest purchases. This solves the problem, but then you can harvest the guest’s email or some other pieces of information to further boost online sales.

As a clever in-between solution, you can use social media as a way for your customers to quickly make an account.

Platforms such as Facebook or Google allow you to make a profile on a website in seconds, thus eliminating the annoying filling out of forms. 

6. Utilize personalization 

A nifty workaround trick to use when your buyers are giving up on purchases due to account-creating at checkout we talked about above, would be to offer them personalization. 

Personalization is an interesting way to improve user experience, as it allows the browsing potential customer to get exactly what they want.

It allows you to harvest some pieces of info they provide in the process. 

For example, as a part of a customization effort to help your users pick shoe size and color, you can ask them for an email address.

So you can keep in touch with them and let them know about the newest upcoming shoe model! 

7. Support a cause 

This one’s a bit iffy, but it could work if you’re careful. 

Depending on what your target market is, consider getting behind a major ongoing cause such as climate change—everyone approves of saving seal pups. 

As a general rule of thumb, staying away from politics if you can is a recommendation. (If you do want to get political, definitely proceed with caution.) 

8. Offer free shipping and easy returns

Offering free shipping to customers and a simple return policy will encourage more orders and boost customer trust.

This customer-centric strategy encourages a pleasurable purchasing experience, which increases the possibility of repeat business and higher conversion rates.

Through this approach, you can attract more customers and encourage them to complete their purchases, ultimately driving online sales and fostering loyalty among your customer base.

9. Implement live chat support

Offering live chat help allows for real-time engagement with consumers, resolving problems quickly, and increasing customer happiness.

This personalized strategy leads to higher conversion rates and a more pleasant shopping experience, which ultimately leads to more online sales.

10. Ask for feedback 

Another clever way to secure a buyer’s email would be to ask them to provide feedback for their user experience. 

Now, to be fair, pop-ups that ask you to evaluate something when all you want is to buy that bicycle helmet and have it arrive ASAP, can be annoying.

For this reason, keep these ‘asking for feedback’ popups short and sweet, and make sure they include a section where you prompt the user to provide their email for further reference. 

As a finishing touch, say ‘Thank you, your input is of massive value to us!’ or something of the sort—you’ve connected with the customer and bagged the email, too. 

eCommerce lead generation examples

Examples of successful eCommerce lead generation tactics are everywhere—from your nearby fruit stand growing in size thanks to the good-old word of mouth (courtesy of local aunts and grannies) to eCommerce ventures doubling their sales thanks to brand-merging. 

Here are three examples of how a lead generation strategy can bring in major results. 

1. GoPro & RedBull

Extreme sports and energy drinks seem to do well together, even though many professional athletes couldn’t be seen downing a Guarana if their life depended on it.

It’s likely the high-octane excitement and adrenaline pumping that connect the two. 

GoPro and RedBull famously have a co-branding venture to the benefit of both companies.

At the moment of the announcement of their new merging, both have gained access to millions of new fans and more importantly, from a monetary perspective, potential buyers. 

2. Automotive lead visiting a virtual showroom

A person visiting a virtual showroom in VR, let’s say, is an excellent example of using technology to advertise a new concept car, for example. 

This way, rather than having to actually bring the vehicle in every time there’s a new interested buyer, the customers can see what the car will look like in virtual reality first. 

3. Financial sector lead using an online calculator

Let’s imagine you’ve developed a new finance-related eCommerce business with a set of new exciting tools that bankers can use.

Having a visitor use one of your advanced percentage and inflation calculators means you have a potential buyer for the rest of the tools! 

Conclusion 

All in all, whether you’re selling customized T-shirts, or you’ve just developed a new Candy Crush knockoff, lead generation is essential.

To get the most out of your eCommerce website, you’re going to need a smooth web presence complete with beautiful landing pages and all kinds of exciting email-procuring prompts. 

At PSDCenter, we put our award-winning web design, the blood, sweat, and tears of 10 years of experience, and our team of computer-savvy programmers and designers on the line for your benefit.

Let’s catch your potential leads hook, line, and sinker! Check out our website and we’ll kick-start from there. 

The world of subtle lead generation is complex and contains many different approaches.

That said, taking your time to learn how to employ these tactics is a fantastic investment that can help you make more and grow your business in ways you couldn’t before.