A common question most eCommerce business owners wake up to every day: how to grow my eCommerce business?
One search on the internet and you’ll find tons of content around growing an eCommerce business.
The problem is that most of them are super generic and have been done to death.
In this post, we share eCommerce business growth strategies that go beyond the obvious and offer you a competitive advantage.
- Give them Reasons to stay on your site
- User Experience is everything :-)
- Do email marketing to boost revenue (and not just open rates)
- Upsell, but not like everyone else
- Mobile conversions continue to be lower than desktop ones; let's solve that
- Hey <first name> is NOT personalization. Let's do more
- Use social proof - but wisely
- Always rely on Buyer Psychology
- Popups work only when they're NOT ANNOYING
- Use persuasion techniques
- Build long-term customer relationships
- Build a strategy for low-selling products
- Keep Seniors in mind—when designing pages
- Pricing is a Strategy (and not a gimmick)
- Ads are good; Organic is Gold
- Don't track every metric (pick wisely)
- Test - relentlessly
1. Give them Reasons to stay on your site
As an eCommerce business owner, shopping cart abandonment is probably not a fresh problem on your plate.
It’s definitely an expensive one. As per Forrester’s research, cart abandonment leads to $18 billion losses in annual sales revenues for eCommerce brands.
Presently, the eCommerce cart abandonment rate is at 69%.
SourceAnother problem linked to cart abandonment is a complex checkout process. The result remains the same: customers leave without buying.
Figuring out why customers leave is one part of the equation we discussed in the first point. The other half is improving the checkout experience to drive more sales.
The following post will help you identify the crucial reasons why customers are leaving without purchasing. It’ll also offer 10 unconventional ways you can counter cart abandonment and grow your revenue.
10 Under-utilized ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment
And this blog below will offer you a treasure trove of ideas you can implement to improve the checkout process for your customers.
How do I increase my website’s checkout rate? (27 brilliant insights)
2. User Experience is everything :-)
Every single page on your eCommerce site plays an important role in every single stage of the customer journey.
For example, a visitor may land on your homepage through content marketing or social media channels. They’ll become aware of your brand.
Next, they’ll move on to your category pages and explore your range—considering whether to buy or not. If they’re convinced, they’ll move on to the product page.
In case they plan to buy something, they’ll head on to the add to cart page. Finally, they’ll finish the transaction in the checkout page.
Optimizing each of these pages can help you boost conversions at every stage and land more sales.
Check out the following posts for tips on how to optimize your eCommerce site pages.
4 secret pillars to building a high-converting eCommerce homepage
12 ideas for building high-converting category pages
17 proven ways to increase product page conversions (+ examples)
20 effortless Shopify checkout page customizations that increase sales
11 fast and easy ways to boost Thank You page conversions
3. Do email marketing to boost revenue (and not just open rates)
eCommerce email marketing is an important tool to improve conversions at every stage of the shopper’s journey.
Use welcome emails to create a memorable onboarding experience.
Leverage other transactional emails such as order confirmation or shipping update emails to keep your shoppers engaged.
Abandoned cart emails are a great way to nudge customers back into the purchase cycle. Product launch emails help build excitement and anticipation.
Browse abandonment emails help customers move past the consideration stage.
Check out the following posts on best practices to use email marketing to grow your eCommerce business.
Welcome emails: 16 easy changes that generate 10X revenue
8 Reasons why your browse abandonment emails suck (and how to fix them)
10 product launch email examples that drove massive sales (+ templates)
20 abandoned cart email examples that actually win back lost customers
4. Upsell, but not like everyone else
Now that you’ve fixed a hole from where you were leaking money, you can boost your sales by getting repeat business.
Customers who have already bought or are planning to buy from you will be even keener to explore more products from you. Hence, upselling to them can turn them into brand loyalists. Ultimately, your average order value will increase, and subsequently, your sales.
In fact, Amazon has declared that 35% of its revenue comes from upselling.
Source
Check out the following post. You’ll find out:
- How to build an effective upselling strategy
- What to upsell
- Who to upsell to
- When is the right time to upsell
- 17 smart upselling tactics used by the top brands
17 Surefire ways to upsell in eCommerce & increase average order value
5. Mobile conversions continue to be lower than desktop ones; let's solve that
By the end of 2021, 53.9% of all eCommerce sales are going to come from mobile.
A majority (79%) of your customers are purchasing from mobile. Growing your eCommerce business without optimizing your store for mobile is losing money.
Mobile conversion rates—in comparison to desktop ones—are dismal. This is a great opportunity where you can make your mark.
Here’s a post that talks about 13 surefire ways you can optimize mobile conversions.
How To Make Your Mobile Conversion Rates Soar: A Primer
6. Hey <first name> is NOT personalization. Let's do more
The days for a one-size-fits-all approach are gone. Today, customers are looking for personalized shopping experiences.
Are they getting tailored results on your store site when searching for a product? It’s their birthday—are you sending special offers to help them celebrate?
eCommerce brands that haven’t yet integrated personalization into their eCommerce marketing strategy are losing over $756 billion.
The following two blogs will help you nail personalization and grow your eCommerce business. You’ll learn:
- Smart personalization tactics to drive more sales
- Personalization examples from top brands
7 ways to make more money through eCommerce personalization
eCommerce personalization: 20 revenue generating examples
7. Use social proof - but wisely
Your customers are human and humans are social beings. They’ll want what others want.
So if they see your existing customers using your product, they’d want to use it too.
This is what social proof is all about and you can integrate it into your store to expand your eCommerce business.
SourceThere are various ways you can use social proof on your eCommerce website such as customer testimonials, product reviews, and more.
Find about all of them in the following post.
What is social proof and why it is crucial for your eCommerce site
8. Always rely on Buyer Psychology
2 psychological hacks top eCommerce owners use are urgency and scarcity.
They are essential tools to help you boost engagement, improve conversion rates, and drive customer loyalty. All this will finally help you grow your eCommerce business.
Most store owners know what they are, but few are able to use it effectively.
In the following posts, we share actionable ideas on how to implement these psychological hacks for your eCommerce business.
14 ways of using FOMO To boost conversion rates
Scarcity marketing: Fix the 6 most common mistakes
9. Popups work only when they're NOT ANNOYING
Most customers are finicky about price and discounts. They’d have more incentive to buy from you when presented with special offers.
Sadly, they have short attention spans—so you have less time to motivate them to buy.
Using your exit-intent popups wisely can save the day—and your sales.
Here’s how to optimize exit intent pop-ups to get more sales.
18 ways to make shopify popups less annoying (+ examples)
10. Use persuasion techniques
It doesn’t take a lot to tip your customers from just considering your product to actually deciding to buy your product.
Once they’re convinced that your product can solve their problem, they’ll go for it.
Thankfully, you have a lot of real estate to convince them—product descriptions and CTAs.
Use these areas wisely and you get valuable customers who will give you business.
Check out the following posts to know how to optimize your product descriptions and CTAs for more conversions.
14 Simple tips to draft highly persuasive product descriptions
21 ways to create call-to-action buttons that convert
11. Build long-term customer relationships
As discussed earlier, repeat business is the key to eCommerce business growth.
To ensure repeat business, you’d have to retain your customers by building long-term relationships with them.
There are several ways to do this such as creating loyalty programs, requesting customer reviews, and many more.
SourceFind out all the tactics for long-term customer retention in the following post:
Top 13 eCommerce Customer Retention Strategies in 2021
12. Build a strategy for low-selling products
Growing your eCommerce business doesn’t just mean selling your most popular products.
When you’ll be able to sell all products—even your low-selling ones—that’s when you’ll be able to boost sitewide sales.
A smart idea to keep your low-selling products in sale, save cost, and land more revenue is to try out product bundling.
The following post will guide you on how to use product bundling along with examples of how bands are using it.
10 product bundling ideas that actually work (with examples)
13. Keep Seniors in mind—when designing pages
Just like you shouldn’t miss out on selling all your products, you shouldn’t miss out on selling to all demographics.
Senior shoppers are a growing demographic. Not including them as your target audience can cost you revenue.
The following post offers complete guidance on
- How to craft a strong senior-friendly eCommerce marketing strategy
- Ideas on how to implement it for your store
22 ways to make online shopping easy for seniors
14. Pricing is a Strategy (and not a gimmick)
Pricing is an important consideration for most customers. It’s also an important reflection of your brand image.
Pricing too low can hamper the customer’s perception of your brand quality. Pricing too high can lead to losing out price-conscious customers.
Intelligent eCommerce pricing strategies can help you power over this dilemma.
This post will help you come up with the right pricing strategies to grow your eCommerce business
Pick the right product price: 8 eCommerce pricing best practices
15. Ads are good; Organic is Gold
Don’t just focus your energy on your existing customers. Try to rope in new customers too.
No, not just through ads. Go the organic way.
Identify how your products can solve your customers’ problems. Try to answer their doubts and questions through various content sections such as product descriptions and blogs. Use multi-intent keywords in specific sections such as your metas, product information, and copy.
The following post drives deep into how you can build eCommerce traffic and expand your business with these ideas and more.
17 Creative (Yet Economical) Ways To Drive Traffic To Your eCommerce Store
16. Don't track every metric (pick wisely)
Growth is not a one-time thing. It makes sense only when it’s consistent.
You can achieve consistent eCommerce growth when you keep measuring it.
There are several eCommerce metrics to measure. Choose which ones can be the KPIs for your business and start measuring them.
This will show you how profitable your business is and how much you need to improve to grow.
Check out the following post on important eCommerce metrics and keep growing your eCommerce business.
The only 10 metrics eCommerce founders should track
17. Test - relentlessly
Another way to keep your eCommerce growth consistent is by testing everything.
A/B testing will help you to identify what works and what doesn’t—the winning strategy can improve your conversion rates.
There are several elements on your eCommerce website that you can test: CTAs, images, copy, social proof, navigation, and checkout process.
The following posts will guide you on how you can use A/B testing to grow your eCommerce business.
What is A/B testing?
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