Selling children’s articles and toys isn’t child’s play. According to Statista, the European toys and games industry will be worth €44.77m in 2022. The market is expected to grow year-on-year by 4.46% to 2026.
In this article, we’ve listed 10 ways of how to sell more toys online.
1. Think like a child.
Before you start selling toys online, you need to create a list of things that are important for your toy business. Your offering should be appealing to children, even if it’s the parents/other adults who have the money and will decide if they will place an order. It must be appealing and match the children’s minds and curiosity. Use a lot of colours, apply images that show the products in the best possible way, and write simple, easy-to-understand descriptions on your e-commerce store. Think like a child, in other words.
2. Create a Detailed Product Page.
Imagine for a second you are going to buy a product for your children. Before you complete the purchase, you need as much information as possible about this particular toy. For example, you need to know what ages the toy/board game is safe for. What materials are used to make the product and does the product have a warranty? These are just a few examples of important information.
Use product videos
A lot has happened in content marketing in the past few years, and video content is more important than ever. Use product videos on your e-commerce website to introduce new toys, board games, toy brands, and so on. Having good product videos can be crucial to getting purchases.
Product close-up videos zoom in on your product and display specific features viewers may not see in the images, or demonstrate a function that has to be observed very closely. Or they can simply show your product from multiple angles.
3. Bet on second-hand sales.
Children grow fast, and sometimes they barely have time to use all toys before something else applies instead. At the same time, customers are more aware and interested in what they are buying, and there has never been as much talk about the environment and sustainability as there is right now.
An excellent way to meet customer demands is to offer a second-hand service to sell pre-owned products. For example, provide an easy way to send in toys and games that children have grown out of or stopped using.
This is good for both the environment and for customers’ wallets.
4. Offer easy and smooth deliveries / returns.
It’s important to have an easy way to deliver & return packages. If it is not simple enough, it will probably not result in a purchase in the first place.
According to Postnord, home deliveries are more popular than ever. More and more people choose to have their packages delivered directly to their door, instead of picking them up at a parcel agent. Perfect for parents, saves time and significantly simplifies everyday life.
Click & collect / store pickup has grown a lot during the pandemic. This is a perfect option for retailers that have both a physical and an online toy store. Customers can easily place their orders online, and then be able to pick up the package at the store a few hours later.
5. Think mobile-first, always.
Today, we are addicted to our phones. It’s almost like the phone is an extended body part. Statista predicts that toy purchases made via a mobile device will increase from 47.9% in 2022 to 50.6% in 2025. So, one thing is for sure, your e-commerce website must be optimised for smartphones and tablets, and hence have a mobile-friendly layout.
Mobile is the most common platform to start searching on; this is also where the customer journey begins in many cases.
According to Simicart:
- 48% of buyers use a mobile device to start searching with a search engine.
- 58% of Google searches are done via a mobile device. In 2016 it was 34%.
- 65% of clicks on paid Google search results come from a mobile device.
6. Personalised Product recommendations.
Product recommendations make online shoppers more likely to complete their purchase and contribute to improved cross-sells and up-sells. Utilising machine learning and AI is great to ensure that relevant products are recommended, and to increase the average basket size, leading to higher conversion and increased sales.
About Voyado Product recommendations
Voyado Elevate Recommendations make shoppers more likely to complete their purchase, and provide cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
Real-time recommendations suggest products based on the collective interest of all your site visitors as well as personalised based on the unique visitor’s behaviour.
These personalised recommendations take into account products that have been recently viewed, added to the cart, and purchased.
7. Use Reviews to boost sales.
Online shoppers research before making a purchase, by gathering information about the product they want to buy. Reading users’ experiences, product reviews and ratings is a part of the purchase decision. Parents trust other parents.
Did you know that...
- 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- Only 12% of consumers ignore reviews before making a purchase.
- 85% of consumers say they read up to 10 reviews before making their decision.
- 50 or more reviews per product can mean a 4-5% increase in the conversion rate.
If you ask for feedback for a product and show that you publish it when it is received, you will get more honest feedback from your customers. Both good and bad. When you get feedback, you can act on it and improve. You can choose: no feedback and fewer sales, or learn from the feedback and sell more.
8. Use Social Media and Influencers.
Combining e-commerce with social media is very powerful. 60% of consumers use social media to research new products and services.
Currently, social media platforms that allow social commerce in their apps consist of, among others, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
They make it possible for customers to see a product on the app, hit the “buy now” button, and then complete the purchase right there, still in the app.
Increase conversions with influencer marketing
On social media, people like to follow accounts that provide value, for them. Usually, people have similar interests and live the same type of life as themselves. Dog owners follow other dog owners, car enthusiasts follow other car enthusiasts. Parents follow other parents.
Influencer marketing is an effective tool for those who want to increase conversion. Use unique links for each influencer and discounts codes for limited offers. This way you can easily measure how much has been sold, thanks to that influencer.
9. Make it easy by offering one-click purchase.
Make it as easy as possible for your customer to make a purchase. Something that has increased in recent years is one-click purchases. One-click purchase is a technique that allows customers to make purchases with the payment information needed to complete the purchase having been entered by the user previously.
Klarna, a Swedish payment and shopping service for e-commerce sites, is a great example of this payment method.
10.Improve your e-commerce Navigation.
Visiting an e-commerce site with disorganized navigation is like driving somewhere with hazy directions. You can get lost on the road because the route is too difficult to follow.
Navigation is one of the most important features for your e-commerce site to convert. If the technology or design doesn’t work as it should, the potential customers quickly disappear. The home page is your display window, and the purpose is for it to inspire, create trust, security and attract the desire to buy.
About Voyado Site navigation
The Voyado Elevate Navigation function provides product categories and facets to support and guide each visitor in quickly finding the products that are most relevant to them.
Faceted navigation helps users to narrow down the products to those that match their needs. It enables them to investigate several choices, even changing category without affecting previously selected refinements.
The ranking order in categories and product listings is optimised in real-time. The default sort order is relevance, intended to have a positive effect on the likeliness of a customer buying a product. With every single search, relevance for that specific request will be updated.
