eCommerce founders are always looking for ways to grow ROI. With many strategies out there, deciding which strategy works best is difficult.
Cutting the noise, here are time-tested strategies to help you grow your eCommerce ROI on a limited budget.
What Is a Good eCommerce ROI?
If you want an honest answer, there’s no such thing as a good eCommerce ROI. Sure, Google might say it's either 10-20%, but with an economic slowdown looming large, you can never be so sure.
Your industry could be more prone to slowdowns while others may not feel the heat as much. When you look past this, other factors come into play.
Your customers can no longer afford to buy or have found better alternatives that match their idea of ‘value’.
If your business is using standard shipping instead of flat rate shipping, your ROI will be different. If you compare yourself to competitors who have a steady retention rate, it's only fair to say you have the wrong expectation.
Finally, if your marketing channels have an ROI of 2:1 ratio instead of the standard 5:1, don’t beat yourself up. It could be the start of your journey to getting to your good eCommerce ROI.
Remember, it's always the smaller wins that always lead to big victories.
How To Calculate eCommerce ROI?
To calculate eCommerce ROI, you’ll need to calculate your Net Profit.
Net Profit = Total Revenue — Total Costs
Once, you have your Net Profit, use the formula, Net Profit / Total Costs*100
Let’s say you are selling a jumpsuit worth $200 via Google Shopping Ads and Emails. You spend $50 on ads and $75 on emails getting 7 conversions and 18 conversions respectively.
Since the ROI for ads stands at 2800% and email scores 4700%, without a doubt, email has a higher ROI.
While a useful metric, eCommerce ROI analysis doesn’t factor in LTV—a crucial factor for recurring sales.
10 Ways to Increase Your eCommerce ROI
1. Find out where you’re losing customers
You’re losing out on improving your eCommerce ROI, if your customers are not spending as much time as they should on your site pages.
Your low-performing pages may need the CRO treatment. Here are ways you can fix them:
- Make product discovery easy on the homepage—feature category thumbnail above the fold and bring visuals in search
Warby Parker makes finding products easier with visual results.
- Adopt country-specific messaging—use geolocation and customize the pages for the country or region
- Better your product pages—offer a 30-day free trial, home try-on, different shipping options, expert consultation, customization, trust signals BNPL options, and UGC
- Inspire confidence with FAQs and return policy—use tabbed navigation to save space
- Make shopping easier for returning visitors—feature a popup containing the products they browsed last
Everlast uses it to re-engage customers back into the funnel.
- Reduce checkout effort—add a progress bar for reference, offer up to 3 express checkout options, and limit the number of form fields
- Minimize typing effort—use Luhn’s validator for credit card details and numeric keypads for address fields
- Reinforce checkout security—Add an interactive icon on badge hover to inspire confidence in customers
But, are you sure where the problem lies? That’s where a ton of brands go wrong.
Here are of couple of steps you can take to identify the problem:
a. Spilt your funnel in the following format
- Product Page → Add To Cart
Identify which of these paths have a less than 50% conversion rate.
b. Start analyzing deeper to understand the root cause of the problem
Let’s say only 20% of your users are going from the product page to the cart page. Try decoding:
- The difference in behavior between segments—check desktop vs mobile, new vs returning, source/medium
- What’s the bounce rate on the product page? Where are you directing users to click?
- Are users dropping on your cart page? Are you trying to squeeze in too many recommendations there?
- What are the concerns? Is it a lack of a save for a later option or a payment method?
- Do they have queries? Is the chat not available on the cart page?
Once you have these answers, you’ll now have an actual problem to solve.
2. Personalize your marketing efforts
77% of marketing ROI is due to segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns.
Yet, only a sizable number of eCommerce can grow their ROI via personalization.
Check out these tips to personalize your campaigns better:
- Send emails with 101 guides to people who have stayed beyond the average time on the page—shows a bit of purchase intent
- Create personalized quizzes—Ask what, why, when, and how questions; do it well and you’ll have their emails in minutes
- Offer 1:1 consultations—helps in conveying customers that you are committed to helping them find the best product(Attention is a hell of a drug)
Here’s a brilliant example of a 1:1 consultation by Bloomingdale’s. Notice how the microcopy explains the benefit in one-liners.
3. Create a content hub
The ROI for content marketing across all industries is 748% when done consistently.
The best way to do this is a Content Hub.
A content hub is a one-stop guide for all your branded content. It contains a main page linking to blogs on different topics containing subtopics. And this isn’t limited to blogs but applies to ebooks, infographics, and videos as well.
Here’s what you need to know before creating content hubs:
- Before creating a content hub, do a deep dive if you have at least 10-15 topics—inform customers of your expertise
- If your parent topic contains micro topics each pointing to individual content say more than 20—a content library model works best for you
A content library contains a list of topics on a main page that leads to various sub-topics each having numerous links.
Beardbrand has a one-stop shop guide—that features different topics ranging from beard, mustache, and lifestyle, to product guides. This is a brilliant content library example.
The subcategories are well segmented making information easy to find on all things beard.
4. Streamline your SEO process
While SEO might be mainstream, 57% of North American brands don’t have an SEO strategy.
Yep, that’s shocking but true!
Fortunately, SEO needn’t be as complicated as it is made out to be. Start by:
- Updating your site for low competition keywords—say it's ranking between number 8 to 20 in the list
- Optimizing your product pages with original content—don’t copy the manufacturer's content
- Limiting title tags within 60-70 characters—take a look at how it fares on mobile
- Using organic keywords that are high on commercial intent such as best running shoes for bigger men—helps in optimizing product and collection pages
- Finding keywords that match all types of intent such as best running shoes for men with heel pain—create content backed by medical authority
5. Create paid ads that deliver
Paid ads have a significant impact on growing your eCommerce ROI despite rising costs. So much so, that 43% of high-traffic sites spend more than $5000 on social ads.
Equally important, Facebook is a high ROI channel with 78% of American customers using it to discover products.
Here are some relevant tips that help you create high-performing ads:
- When creating Google ads, create a list of non-branded negative keywords to reduce unwanted clicks
- Use price anchoring in your ads—a tactic where the original price is slashed and used as a reference to highlight the discounted price
- Create a Display Dynamic remarketing program— divide each group by funnel, product viewers, cart visitors, and checkout
- Use images that represent your brand—either that of your customers or micro-influencers
6. Invest in triggered email marketing
Triggered email marketing can bump your eCommerce ROI—generate 4x revenue with 18x profits.
And more importantly—they aren’t as complex as people make them out to be.
Here are some of the best pieces of advice for boosting eCommerce ROI from founders:
- Space out your welcome emails—send the first one right after subscribing; the second 6 hours later; and the third after 24 hours
- Set the right expectations—tell them what’s next, the benefits of joining their community, tell them about your brand story
- Write a Founder’s note—a personalized note from the founder plus why the product can be a lifesaver to reduce cart abandonment
- Incentivize surveys—a gift card works great; keep the post-delivery surveys for later
- Break the ice with back-in-stock emails—include nudges such as X people have added this to their carts
7. Stick to multichannel selling
Multichannel selling accounted for 576 billion US dollars in 2023 alone.
But, eCommerce brands struggle to find the right channels. Here are relevant tips to help you:
- Choose niche channels—channels that aren’t mainstream such as Discord, a subreddit, or Telegram can help you find buyers with the right intent
- Stop repurposing ads to avoid content fatigue—Rework on your ads every 30 days
- Study the algorithm and trends to set realistic KPIs—a reach of 7k on Instagram isn’t the same as 1000 in-store visits via Facebook
At the end of the 30-day, look at your channel sales growth. Even a small growth should let you know that you are on the right path.
Don't forget to read: How To Increase eCommerce Sales: 23 Immediately Actionable Ideas
8. Get started with affiliate marketing
Even though 16% of eCommerce sales in the US and Canada come from Affiliate marketing, SMBs aren’t great fans.
That’s because of spammy traffic that dilutes the eCommerce ROI.
Check out these tips to start fresh:
- Enforce your privacy policy—includes a clause saying affiliates are forbidden from posting affiliate links on discount or coupon codes
- Use micro-influencers that command a large following—partnering with individuals who prioritize ethics can help you run a stable affiliate program
- Stay away from coupon code aggregators—an affiliate link on their site means regular commission for little to no work
- Forbid affiliates to run Google Ads in your name—this will only lead to regular customers milking you for your discounts
9. Revisit your pricing strategies
When it comes to pricing, eCommerce brands choose to go extreme—sell themselves low or too high.
And this is done without monitoring ever changing customer preferences.
Here are some smart pricing tips to boost your eCommerce ROI:
- For a new product launch—choose cost-plus pricing to achieve satisfactory profits or try price skimming when you recover 50% of the production cost
- Use the 75:25 rule—limit discounts to 25% of your high selling categories so too many discounts won’t kill your profit margins
- If you are an SMB, offering a price match guarantee will hurt your margins
- For beauty products, prioritize Cost of Goods Sold—it refers to all the direct costs incurred during production such as Ingredients, formula, product testing, and certification
10. Create a proactive loyalty rewards program
A loyalty rewards program is easily the best thing you can do for your retention. Loyalty and reward program members generate 12 to 18% additional revenue when compared to nonmembers.
The only problem—not setting up the right expectations. Here’s how you can change that:
- Be crystal clear—mention the points-to-reward ratio; for instance 3 points for $1 spent and rewards for a successful referral
- Outline the benefits—same-day free shipping, early access offers, exclusive access to product launches
- Reward behavior-based incentives—share on social media, refer a friend, create UGC, etc.
- Offer incentives like first dibs to brand collaborations
Not to forget, a loyalty program software can help you run things smoothly—take a call based on ease of implementation, analytics, and integrations.
Wrapping up
A positive eCommerce ROI is a means to an end. But, the road isn’t as smooth.
98% of visitors who visit an eCommerce site—drop off without buying anything.
Why: user experience issues that cause friction for visitors.
And this is the problem Convertcart solves.
We've helped 500+ eCommerce stores (in the US) improve user experience—and 2X their conversions.
How we can help you:
Our conversion experts can audit your site—identify UX issues, and suggest changes to improve conversions.
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