A common goal for creative people with a love of games is to turn their creativity into a business. One way to do this is by creating accessories related to the games you love, and then selling those accessories to others who also enjoy the game. Whether it’s unique pieces for a board game, digital products for an online game, or customized accessories for gaming systems, there is a high demand out there for unique pieces related to gaming.
If you’ve already started your gaming accessories online store, you may not be getting the amount of sales that you originally hoped. Luckily, there are a few things you can do that will likely boost your sales and they don’t take a long time to implement. Below are a few strategies to try that should improve your sales numbers.
Research Your Audience
A good place to start is researching your audience. The more information you have on the people you want to sell to, the better you can optimize your website. For example, there’s no sense in generating a ton of products related to one game if your audience primarily plays another. You might learn that instead of wanting Pokémon throw pillows your audience actually craves custom Dungeons and Dragons dice.
There are a few ways you can go about researching your audience. One way is to simply contact them directly. If you have an email list, you could send out a survey, or you could interview some previous customers. If you have website visitor tracking set up, you can see what keywords people are using to find your website. Other ways to research your audience include connecting with them on social media, attending gaming conventions, or seeing what other gaming accessory websites are popular.
Implement Merchandising Strategies
An often overlooked strategy for eCommerce websites is merchandising. In retail sales, merchandising refers to how you display your products in-store and the display strategies you can use to boost sales. While you may not be able to create a physical custom display with your products since you’re operating online, that doesn’t mean you should ignore how you present your products.
Spend some time researching online merchandising strategies and tools that can assist you. For example, there’s Fast Simon’s merchandising feature, which comes with AI search and other merchandising tools to help you boost sales. Sometimes a few small tweaks to your online presentation are all you need to start boosting sales.
Work with Influencers to Promote
A great way to promote your products is by working with influencers in your niche. There are likely some very influential people on social media who enjoy the same games that you’re targeting with your store. You may be able to partner with them in a number of ways, either providing them with free products in exchange for promotion or giving them a portion of any sales they help generate.
Look for social media users and streamers with a large number of followers who talk a lot about the games that you sell accessories for. Once you’ve identified a few, see if they have a history of working with other products, as this is a good sign that they may be willing to work with you as well. Then, look for their contact information and reach out to see if they are interested in partnering with you.
Speed Up Your Sales and Checkout Process
A key thing to do for any eCommerce website is to speed up the sales and checkout process. You want to make it as quick and simple as possible for your customers to go from learning about your product to completing a transaction. Too many eCommerce websites miss out on sales because their checkout process takes too long or has too many steps.
Go through your sales funnel step by step and see if there are ways you can speed things up. For example, you might allow customers to check out as a guest rather than requiring them to create an account. Or you could add more payment options so that some customers don’t have to spend time setting up a new payment method.
Collect and Analyze Data
Finally, it’s important that you collect as much information as you can about your customers, and then analyze this data. You want to know how your customers found your website, which products are the most popular, which ones return the best profit, which product pages have the highest bounce rate and much more. The more information you can gather, the smarter decisions you can make going forward on how to improve your sales.
