How to Sell More in Your Online Store in 2024

Are you ready to face 2024 with renewed energy to sell more & grow the online business you’ve always wanted? It’s time to take ownership of everything from your marketing to product creation in order to grow your e-commerce store. Here’s how to get started for a profitable new year

Survey Your Customers

Before you do anything else, survey your customers about what they want to see more of from your online store. Use a combination of multiple-choice & open-ended survey questions to make the most of their feedback. Here are some ideas to kick off your 2024 survey:

• What’s more important to you, sales price, free shipping, or customer experience?
• Which products do you want to see more of this year?
• Do you think we send enough emails—too little or too many?
• What would motivate you to tell your friends & family about our online store?
• How would you describe our e-commerce store in a few words?

To solicit more of a response, you can offer a limited-time coupon to get some feedback going. It’s also a good idea to promote your survey on social media & entice people to sign up & join.

Dig Into Your Ecommerce Analytics

Now that you have an idea of what your customers want, see what’s been going on with your sales over the past year. Which products took off & when? For example, an end-of-year school sale may have produced the most sales in a specific product category. Or a random promotion on a Tuesday in March may have created a sales frenzy because there weren’t any other sales going on out there.

Every piece of data matters. Note what region & demographic the majority of your sales came from to what time of day most people open your marketing emails. Make notes on all of your data & work on segmenting your lists accordingly. You may realize some customers are the most motivated by sales, while others are more likely to buy when the season changes & new products roll into your online store.

Redefine Your Niche

What’s going on with your ecommerce niche? Is it just a collection of products or are you selling to a specific market? Your niche could be unique, curated items, or funny POD designs on drinkware. Or you may have a theme that shows up everywhere, from your branding to your marketing. Your niche could also be selling items that cater to a specific group of people, like urban college students.

Depending on what you’re selling, a hyper-focused, highly refined niche may not be necessary. But having no niche at all dilutes everything from your product copy to your online marketing. It’s challenging to brand your online store when there’s nothing about your designs, products, or story that stands-out.
Make 2024 about tightening up your niche enough that consumers understand your brand identity, what you sell, & why. It makes it easier to attract an audience that clearly identifies you with the specific niche they’re looking for.

Lower Your Overhead

No matter how much money you make, your profits can quickly get sucked away by high overhead. How much do you spend on:

• Storage
• Inventory
• Web hosting or seller platform fees
• Marketing
• Virtual assistants or staff

You may not be able to do much about costs like your web hosting or selling platform fees. But you can absolutely crush other overhead costs, starting with inventory. If you’re still relying on physical inventory, you can eliminate it by switching to POD.

We also make it possible to experiment with new ideas & product ideas without taking a financial risk, making it easy to experiment with new designs & products. POD doesn’t just reduce physical overhead; it frees up tons of time & resources so you don’t need as many assistants or hours to get all your work done & products out the door.

Get started with CustomCat here.

Create Systems & Processes for Your Online Store

Part of the fun of running an online store is experiencing something different every day. But that lack of clarity is also what’s dragging down your profits. When there’s no standard operating procedure (SOP) for your online store, you’re constantly starting everything from scratch. That email marketing letter goes unfinished or is so inconsistent that you’re not taking advantage of promotional opportunities. Or your customer service falls to the wayside & leads to a poor experience for your customer.

Writing out all of your SOPs & adding videos or graphics to keep things consistent can also make outsourcing a breeze. Instead of spending your free time pulling together social media posts for the month, you can hand it off to a virtual assistant to do it all for you & schedule it in a system like Later.

Offer More Personalization Options

Today’s consumers want more personalization options & a sense of ownership over their shopping experience. Whether it’s a custom-printed T-shirt or one-of-a-kind coffee mug, you can skyrocket your earnings by offering the ability to tailor products to individual tastes.

The stats about personalized products are proof it’s a profitable move for your e-commerce store. Here’s a breakdown of each demographic’s preference for personalized products.

• 74% of Gen Zers
• 67% Millennials
• 61% Gen Xers
• 57% Baby Boomers

Think personalizing your products sounds like a lot of work? It’s not. We teamed up with Zakeke to make it easy for your customers to add a personal touch to your products. It’s easy to use, scales along with your sales, & is straightforward to integrate into your online store.

Read more about how to use Zakeke & CustomCat in perfect harmony here.

Eliminate Time-Wasting Activities

If you want to earn more, it takes more than focusing on what’s working in your business. You also need to make ruthless decisions about what’s not working. If your social media doesn’t generate any sales & you get the most traffic from Etsy or your blog, double down & renew your efforts there.

There is a caveat. If you’re getting inconsistent sales from a specific channel where you know your audience already hangs out, it’s worth another shot. For example, if you are all college students or young professionals, TikTok could be a great place to create more content & drive more sales. Leveraging influencer marketing or setting aside a small budget for TikTok ads could spark more sales & give you some social proof that you just need a renewed strategy to see more traction.

Supercharge Your Mindset

Getting your mindset in the right place is an underappreciated strategy for earning more e-commerce sales. In reality, mindset is everything. Expecting the worst while hesitantly working on your online store & designing new products just leads to lackluster, inconsistent results. Focusing on an abundant new year with a strategy to match is the catalyst to earning more.

How do you plan to earn more in 2024? Let us know by leaving a comment below!