Consumers love to shop online. Every year the value of online sales will grow by more than 17% until 2027. So how can you build your online business to ensure you benefit from this trend?
We spoke to several eCommerce growth experts, and they gave us their top tips on how you can build a more successful business. From optimizing your call-to-action to using countdown timers for urgency, they’ve provided various tools and strategies proven to work. Check out their advice below.
Felix Rose-Collins
CEO at Ranktracker
Twitter: @ranktrackerr
LinkedIn: Felix Rose-Collins
Set Up Retargeting Ads
Similar to exit-intent pop-ups, retargeting with ads can raise brand awareness and capture those visitors who did not convert on a purchase. This hack works by tracking visitors then displaying your ad on the majority of sites they visit or via facebook.
With retargeting ads you can choose to highlight products they have visited on your store. With the consumer seeing exactly what they viewed the buyer can feel driven to return. You could even sweeten the deal with a preset discount code on that product or free delivery.
You could set up retargeting ads directly with facebook, google ads etc or choose an easier option like criteo or adroll.
Saad Raza
SEO Analyst at Retrocube Mobile App Development
Twitter: @saadrazaseo
LinkedIn: Saad Raza
An effective call-to-action is more than just a button
There is a purpose behind everything we’ve done. Getting visitors to take action is the goal of your website.
No matter what kind of business you run, or whether you keep a blog or a dropshipping business, you need to get your visitors to purchase something. In order to attract customers interested in SaaS businesses, they should offer free trials.
The best way to accomplish this is with calls-to-action (CTAs). In addition, every CTA should be tailored to the specific purposes and needs of each page.
Muhammad Shoaib
SEO Expert at eWorldTrade
Twitter: @M_shoaib_seo
LinkedIn: Muhammad Shoaib
Offer Incentives and Discounts
One of the best ways to increase sales is to offer incentives and discounts to customers. This could be in the form of coupons, free shipping, or other special offers.
Make sure that your incentives are appealing to your target audience and that they are easy to take advantage of. For example, if you’re offering a discount, make sure that it’s a significant amount so that people will be more likely to take advantage of it.
Another great way to offer incentives is to run a contest or giveaway. This is a great way to get people excited about your products and services, and it can also help boost traffic to your website.
Bhujal Patel
Founder at My Digital Kube
Twitter: @bhujal_patel
LinkedIn: Bhujal Patel
Stop Running Your Own Ads!
Running your own Facebook Ads is like eating Spaghetti with a spoon. It get very unproductive and it can get very messy
What you need is an amazing media buyer to join your team so that they can manage the Ads and at the same time, you can focus your energy on higher-level things.
Like for instance, finding new products to sell, optimizing your user experience, to make sure that you’re as profitable as humanly possible with every single transaction.
All of these things take more time to test and tweak to maximize the profits, and that time needs to be taken from somewhere, so make sure you allocate your time properly.
You can’t be running your own Ads!
Tobias Biberbach
Director at Split My Fare
Twitter: @SplitMyFare
LinkedIn: Tobias Biberbach
Target high volume SEO keywords
One of the largest revenue drivers for our business’ online sales is targeting high volume keywords like our cheap train tickets page. This page brings in nearly 40,000 organic visitors per month from Google and we are in the 3rd position for it. It would take tens of thousands of dollars to get this kind of traffic with paid acquisition. With this large amount of organic visitors on this page, it’s easy to convert some of the visitors into paid customers via direct offers on the page, adding them to our email list and more.
Sawaram Suthar
Founder at The Next Scoop
Twitter: @sawarams
LinkedIn: Sawaram Suthar
Integrating chatbot and live chat to the checkout process or the product page
As per Ecommerce statics, approximately 50% of consumers will purchase a Chatbot recommendation if the store has a chatbot in the checkout process or product page.
A chatbot can help to answer lots of common questions and information related to products and services. Further, if it integrates with live chat features, the agent can provide better instant support and make a human-touch experience. This way, customers are more likely to make a purchase which can help you to increase sales.
Melanie Balke
Founder at The Email Marketers
Twitter: @mbalke4
LinkedIn: Melanie Balke
Use SMS marketing to supplement email marketing
One of the best ways to exponentially improve your ecommerce marketing is to add SMS marketing into your strategy. Many ecommerce stores know the value of email marketing, but SMS marketing is largely ignored. With SMS marketing, you can get instant access to customers, higher open rates, higher engagement rates and more conversions. Taking the time to ask for customer’s phone numbers in addition to their email can open up a whole new marketing channel for your ecommerce business.
Jeremy Rivera
Founder at SEOArcade
Twitter: @seoarcade
LinkedIn: Jeremy Rivera
Forecast Your Product’s SEO ROI
Industry standard conversion rate for eCommerce is somewhere around 2.5% but if you have specific conversion data already, you’re ready to go with any SEO data source like SEMrush or Ahrefs etc. Take your most obvious target keyword and see what other URLs rank for that search.
Use your SEO tools to grab the top 100 OTHER keywords they rank for in Google. Your SEO tool should give you monthly search volume estimates, use this organic CTR data and multiply CTR by volume to guestimate traffic. Multiply traffic by conversion rate to get sales. Multiply sales by revenue per product. This gives you a potential revenue for each relevant keyword, helping you get buy-in for your SEO campaign and clarity on keyword targeting!
PREMJITH BPK
SEO Lead at Global Media Insight Digital Marketing Agency
Twitter: @premjithbpk31
LinkedIn: PREMJITH BPK
Use Sales Countdown Timers
A countdown timer is a visual clue that tells customers to take action within a specified period. You must have come across countdown timers while shopping on huge e-commerce sites like Amazon and flipkart. The trick with these timers is that it creates a sense of urgency and shoppers proceed to the checkout quickly. A delivery countdown combined with quick delivery is a sure-shot way to drive up sales. These timers are most commonly used by e-commerce sites on home and category pages as well as product pages.
But while using these timers you should be careful not to overuse them. Their purpose is to provide information to customers and should not merely be used as a sales technique.
Khaled Bentoumi
Founder at Data to Page
Twitter: @bentoumitech
LinkedIn: Khaled Bentoumi
Drive Your Organic Traffic with Programmatic SEO
Like hiring a content writer, programmatic SEO can enhance traffic and conversion on your eCommerce platform. Except, it’s faster than a human. With the ability to produce bulk-level landing pages, the escalation of organic traffic and conversions is inevitable on your website.
With Programmatic generated landing pages, ranking on long tail keywords becomes much easier. For example, pages would include product comparisons and reviews. This means you’ll have recurring visitors to your eCommerce store, as they’ll see your brand as reliable. Ultimately, your website will have a good reputation amongst your audience.
Arvis Renckulbergs
SEO Manager at Setupad
Twitter: @Setupad_Team
LinkedIn: Arvis Renckulbergs
Use video marketing trends to your advantage
Video marketing can be a super-effective way for an eCommerce business to reach its customers right now.
Short-form videos are becoming more and more popular. With apps like TikTok and social media platforms like Facebook, businesses can reach and engage a far-more larger audience than ever.
If you can succeed in creating a viral video, you’re on your way to putting your product in front of a lot of eyeballs.
It’s hard to determine what ingredients are needed to make your video go viral. However, a few components that, mixed with a bit of luck, and content marketing, can help you on the way.
Try to create a compelling story, make it short (30 seconds at most), and relate to your target audience. Use music to emphasise your idea, follow the latest video trends, show the product in use, and be creative!
Chris Makara
Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Ordergroove
Twitter: @ChrisMakara
LinkedIn: Chris Makara
Turn one-time purchases into recurring revenue
In the last two years, subscriptions have gone mainstream, and consumers are acutely aware of them. If you’re new to subscriptions and want to grow rapidly, you should capitalize on consumers’ increased understanding by defaulting to subscriptions in your user journey instead of one-time purchases. You’ll increase subscription enrollment by as much as 200%.
The key thing to remember is that you don’t want to trick shoppers into a subscription. Use messaging that explains to shoppers that subscriptions are the best and most valuable way to purchase your product. Show them how much money they’ll save by subscribing. Most importantly, reassure shoppers that they can cancel their subscription at any time.
Anoop Singh
Growth Head at Zonka Feedback
Twitter: @anoopyersong
LinkedIn: Anoop Singh
Talk about a win-win idea, eh?
73% of e-commerce customers use reviews to make purchasing decisions. There are a tonne of other online stats to back up how customer reviews can improve your revenue. But how to do it?
Doing it manually, especially in a volume-game like e-commerce, can be exhausting, which is why automation is a must.
Basically, you can automatically trigger email, SMS, or even in-app surveys at crucial moments in a customer’s life-cycle, like right after making a purchase, post product delivery, or even a few days after the purchase date.
This enables you to showcase your customer-centricity and increase reviews for your own eCommerce products.
Going one step further, you can setup workflows to ensure that only satisfied customers get follow-up survey links where they can write positive reviews for your eCommerce, platform on 3rd party websites, so you can improve your brand’s overall online reputation.
Asher Ismail
Co-Founder at Uncapped.com
Twitter: @asher_ismail
LinkedIn: Asher Ismail
Invest in Performance Marketing
I recommend performance marketing as an eCommerce growth strategy for a number of reasons. If you are not familiar with the term, performance marketing marketing is the name for online campaigns in which advertisers only pay marketing companies or advertising platforms for results achieved, normally in the form of clicks or conversions. Facebook or Instagram adverts and Google PPC are examples of performance channels.
Performance marketing allows you to see exactly how each ad dollar is used, you ensure your marketing spend is tightly controlled and measured, meaning more efficient campaigns, with less spend wasted. Unlike traditional approaches, performance marketing allows you to plan better, only pay for outcomes, track and measure performance, respond to your customers comments, and uncover new placement options.
As well as better budgeting, performance marketing gives you access to highly detailed customer data, data you can correlate with your customer profile or buyer personas.
David Hoos
Performance Marketing Manager at The Outloud Group
Twitter: @davidhoos
LinkedIn: David Hoos
Name drop recognizable relationships you have as social proof
When site visitors have seconds to decide whether to trust your brand and your site, it’s important that you make it easy for them.
To do this, work to include as many examples of you working alongside other trusted brands and figures. You’ve likely seen this before when a brand posts an “as seen in” graphic with a list of publications that they’ve been featured in.
This can also include relevant influencers who have mentioned you. Keep in mind, these don’t have to be mass media names that you’re dropping. They just need to have relevance and meaning with your target audience.
Noyan Alperen IDIN
CEO at Decktopus
Twitter: @Noyan_idin
LinkedIn: Noyan Alperen IDIN
Build an audience with your content
Retargeting ads are the most important part of the e-Commerce business. It’s well known that at least having 7 touch points with a potential customer is the key. But only setting up a conversion campaign is not the best thing for your company. Have small budgets to build awareness campaigns so that new people can come into your funnel with your own and non-salesy content.
Final Word
You’re in an excellent position if you’re running an eCommerce store. Consumers are expected to spend more online than ever before. But competition is also going to get more challenging. To ensure your business will grow, implement some of the strategies above. These experts have helped numerous other brands succeed, and their tactics can also help you take your business to the next level.
