Sell More Products Online with Smarter Incentives

I've tried the straightforward discount strategy — slash prices, see what happens. It moves product for a week and then the benchmark shifts. Your customers now expect the lower price. There are smarter ways to create urgency and value that don't erode your margins every time you run them.

Make people feel like they got a deal without always cutting price

Free shipping above a threshold is genuinely one of the highest-converting offers in ecommerce platform history. It increases average order value (people add items to hit the threshold) while costing less per order than a straight discount. Bundling accessories or related products at a slight savings does the same thing — you sell more units per transaction and customers feel like they got something extra. The key is that the incentive needs to be real. "Free shipping" that gets baked into inflated product prices will get noticed and will damage trust.

Contests build brand affinity alongside awareness

A contest that asks customers to photograph themselves using your product and tag you on social creates user-generated content, builds social media management tools engagement, and reaches the contestants' own networks — all at once. The prize needs to be meaningful to your actual customers, not just a generic gift card. The mechanics need to be simple. And crucially: you have to deliver the prize publicly and promptly. A contest with a quietly never-announced winner is worse than no contest.

Build a brand that people choose specifically

The long-run competitive advantage in product sales online isn't price — it's that your customers want you specifically. That means having a distinct voice, a recognizable aesthetic, and associations your audience values. Partnering with causes they care about, having your products used by people they respect, and consistently delivering quality creates preference that price undercutting can't overcome. A strong website builder with consistent visual identity is the starting point; the brand associations build through every touchpoint after that.

What I'd skip

I'd skip loyalty points programs that are too complicated to understand at a glance. If a customer has to do math to figure out how many points get them a free thing, the program isn't working. The best loyalty mechanics are dead simple: "Buy 10, get one free" or "earn $1 for every $20 spent." Complexity destroys participation rates.

The bottom line

Selling more products online is less about promotions and more about removing every reason not to buy. Good product descriptions that answer the buyer's questions, email marketing software that stays in touch between purchases, responsive customer service, and genuine incentives that feel like value — these compound into a business where customers return and bring people with them.

Run your marketing analytics software numbers on which incentives actually drove repeat purchases (not just first-time transactions) and double down on those.