How to Increase Online Sales Fast: 18 Ways That Work

The fastest way to increase online sales is to fix what happens to the traffic you already have.

A clunky checkout, nothing on the page that says you are trustworthy, and no follow-up when a cart gets left behind. All three cost you sales today, and all three can be sorted this week.

Everything else, and there is plenty, takes longer to pay off.

Below are 18 things you can do, sorted by how soon each one shows up in your numbers. Start at the top if you are in a hurry.

Short answer: chase sales from the visitors you already have before you go looking for more. Cart emails, a simpler checkout and reviews on the page all show up within days. SEO and loyalty take months.

The three numbers behind every sale

Every online sale comes down to three numbers:

• How many arrive: your traffic.
• How many buy: the share who get to the end and pay.
• How much they spend: the size of each order.

Most stores chase the first one because it feels like progress. The second is where the cheap wins are, because you already paid to get those people there.

Say 10,000 people visit a month and 1% buy. That is 100 sales. Get it to 1.5% and you have 50 more, without spending anything more on ads.

Doing that through traffic instead means finding 5,000 more visitors.

How to increase online sales fast: what works in days

These move first because they plug holes instead of building something new.

What to do	Time to set up	When you see results
Abandoned cart emails	An hour	Within days
Guest checkout	A settings change	Immediately
Social proof notifications	An hour	Within days
Reviews on product pages	A day	Within a week
A deadline on one product	A day	Same week
Free delivery over a set amount	A settings change	Immediately

The rest of the list is grouped the same way, so you can work through it in order instead of trying everything at once.

Why visitors look but do not buy

A shop with 10,000 visitors and almost no sales does not have a traffic problem. People are turning up and deciding against it.

Someone who has never heard of you is weighing up handing card details to a stranger. Most of what settles that costs nothing to add.

• Reviews with star ratings. They count for the most, because the person writing had nothing to gain. A verified buyer label makes them count for more.
• Payment logos at checkout. Visa, PayPal and Mastercard marks are free to add and make paying feel safer.
• A visible refund policy. Buried return terms read as something you are hiding.
• Real contact details. A phone number or address proves there is a business behind the site.
• Photos from customers. User-generated content answers questions your product shots cannot.

Our guide to building trust in an online store covers where each element belongs.

18 ways to increase online sales

Grouped by how fast each one pays back.

Quick wins: results in days

1. Simplify the checkout

A customer who reached checkout already decided to buy. Every extra step after that is a chance to lose them.

What to cut:

• Forced sign-up. Let people check out as guests. Making someone register before paying loses more sales than anything else on this list.
• Extra fields. Ask only for what you need to ship the thing and take the money.
• Surprise costs. Show shipping and tax early. A total that jumps at the last step kills the sale.
• No sense of progress. Show which step they are on and how many are left.

Our guides on express checkout and checkout page design have the specifics.

2. Recover abandoned carts

Most carts get abandoned. Those shoppers picked something and got as far as the cart, which makes them the closest to buying of anyone on your site.

Three emails does it. A reminder within the hour, a nudge the next day, and a last one with a discount if they still have not bought.

See our guide on winning back left carts for the wording and timing.

3. Show social proof while people browse

Live notifications show that other people are buying right now. That settles the “is this shop real?” worry without you having to say a word about yourself.

Recent orders, signups and visitor counts all do the job. It is the online version of walking past a busy restaurant.

It is a script and a template, not a build. WiserNotify reads the orders from your store and shows them as popups or on the page itself, which is why it lands in the quick group.

Our social proof examples cover the formats, and this page shows where to put them on your site.

4. Put reviews next to the buy button

Reviews hidden behind a tab do nothing. They belong where the money changes hands.

A star rating near the price with two or three detailed reviews under it beats a hundred reviews nobody clicks through to find.

The two are not the same job. Notifications say people are buying. Reviews say what those people made of it afterward.

The hard part is having any to show. If your pages are thin, WiserReview asks for one after every order and puts what comes back on the page, so it keeps topping itself up.

See what product reviews do to a buying decision, and how to ask for one without being ignored.

5. Put a real deadline on something

A deadline turns “sometime” into “now”. Someone who would have bought eventually buys today.

It has to be real. A clock that resets when the page reloads gets noticed, and once someone catches you at it they stop believing the next one.

Our guides to limited-time offers and creating urgency cover what to run and how long.

6. Catch people before they leave

An exit popup fires when someone goes to close the tab. They were leaving anyway, so there is little to lose.

Offer something specific. Money off a first order, free delivery, or a size guide if that is what they were stuck on. Take the email either way.

These exit popup examples show what the good ones say.

7. Make delivery free over a set amount

Delivery cost kills more carts than anything else. Set the free-delivery minimum just above what people usually spend.

Two things happen. The complaint goes away, and people add something to qualify.

Medium term: results in weeks

8. Know who you are selling to

Woolly targeting gives you woolly copy. Knowing what your buyer worries about lets you answer it before they ask.

Start with the customers you already have rather than guessing. Our guide to working out who your buyers are walks through it.

9. Fix your product pages

The product page is where most sales are won or lost.

• Multiple angles, plus scale. Show the product in use so people can judge size.
• Facts, not adjectives. Size, material, how it fits. “Premium quality” tells nobody anything.
• Answer the question they keep asking. If everyone emails about sizing, put it on the page.

See our product page guide and these product description examples.

10. Offer more ways to pay

Someone who cannot pay the way they usually do does not switch. They leave.

Cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and pay-later on the expensive stuff each take away a reason to give up.

Our guide to multiple payment options covers which ones to add first.

11. Use email properly

Email costs nothing to send and lands with people who already showed interest.

Three do most of the work. A welcome run for new subscribers, the cart reminders above, and a note after delivery asking for a review and pointing at something related.

12. Sell more to each buyer

Getting a bigger order is easier than finding another customer, because this one already has their card out.

Offer the better version on the product page and the add-ons at the cart. Keep them relevant or they read as clutter.

Our upselling and cross-selling guide covers placement.

13. Run retargeting ads

Most first-time visitors leave without buying. Retargeting puts the product back in front of those same people, which beats advertising to strangers.

Cap how often it shows. The same ad fifteen times turns interest into annoyance.

See our guide on how to run retargeting ads.

14. Time campaigns around the calendar

The demand is already there at Christmas or Diwali. You are catching it rather than making it, which is why these cost less to run.

Plan four to six weeks ahead and give your email list early access.

Our seasonal marketing guide covers the calendar.

15. Reduce the risk of buying

A money-back guarantee moves the risk from the buyer to you. That matters most on expensive things and brands nobody knows.

You will get a few more returns. You will usually get more orders than that.

Long term: results in months

16. Build search traffic

SEO is the slowest thing here and the only one that keeps paying. Traffic you earn still turns up after you stop working on it.

Start with the pages closest to a sale. Product and category pages first, then comparisons for people weighing up options.

17. Give people a reason to come back

Selling again to someone who already bought costs a fraction of finding someone new, and they spend more.

Points, tiers or members-only access all work. The reward has to feel reachable, or nobody bothers.

18. Work with creators

Working with creators puts your product in front of people who already trust whoever is holding it.

Smaller creators usually do more for the money, because the people following them care more. Say it is paid, since a hidden ad wrecks the trust you were buying.

Our influencer marketing guide covers finding them and what to pay.

Mistakes that cost you sales

Mistake	What it costs
Chasing traffic before fixing the shop	You pay for visitors the site cannot sell to
Always having a sale on	Teaches people to wait, and you earn less on every order
Hiding shipping costs until checkout	The most common reason carts get abandoned
Reviews on a separate page	Nobody goes looking, so they change nothing
Doing all of it at once	Nothing gets done properly and you cannot tell what worked
Never measuring	You keep spending on things that do not work

What to measure

Four numbers tell you whether any of this is working.

• How many buy. Orders divided by visitors. The clearest read on whether the site is doing its job.
• What they spend. Total sales divided by orders. Tells you whether the add-ons are working.
• Carts left behind. Shows where the checkout is leaking.
• How many come back. Whether you are building a business or renting customers.

Change one thing at a time and give it two weeks. Change five things at once and you will never know which one worked.

Where to start

In a hurry? Do three things this week. Switch on the cart emails, drop the forced sign-up, and get some reviews onto your product pages.

All three are quick, and none of them need a single extra visitor.

After that, let your numbers pick the order. Lots of abandoned carts points at checkout and payment. Small orders point at add-ons.

Leave SEO and loyalty until the basics are sound. They pay off later, and only once the shop can sell to the people already turning up.

For the ecommerce-specific version, our guide on how to increase ecommerce sales fast goes deeper.