13 Things You Can Do Today To Grow Your Ecommerce Store

1. Write About You

Believe it or not, customers are caring more and more about the story or the reason behind your brand. They want to know a little bit about you and where your company came from. It is often the only thing that an online shopper can turn to to differentiate you from the next guy.

If there is no compelling reason behind why you created your product or your business, customers are not as motivated to buy from you and will likely look elsewhere.

Revealing a little bit about your brand and where your product came from also helps to build trust. Customers don’t want to buy from a faceless company.

This is especially important if you are a new or unknown brand.

Make sure to feature this “about you” content on your site. Don’t just hide it in a footer link.

2. Try to Win Back Lost Customers

Follow up with customers who have abandoned their cart…and not just once. We recommend setting up a series of 3 follow up emails to try to close the sale, the first just an hour after the cart is abandoned.

If the customer still hasn’t purchased, follow up again after 24 hours with a promotion to push them over the edge.

And if they still haven’t purchased? Remind them just once more 3 days later.

There are plenty of tools out there to help you set up these automated emails. We like Conversio.

3. Reward Loyal Customers

Make sure your current customers are feeling the love. Provide discounts to your loyal customers (either through a loyalty program or regular discounts). This will encourage them to continue purchasing.

We also recommend giving them discounts to share with their friends (even if you don’t have a formal referral program).

4. Create a Free Shipping Threshold

Customers expect a free shipping option these days. It’s the price to stay competitive in today’s ecommerce world.

But that doesn’t mean you have to offer free shipping to everyone, no matter what their basket size. Instead, set a threshold for free shipping. Not only does this keep costs down on the shipping side for you, but if you set the threshold intelligently, it can help to greatly increase your average order value.

Start by setting a free shipping threshold about 20% higher than your current AOV. Then test and optimize this threshold over time to see what the sweet spot is for your customers.

5. Upgrade Your Product Descriptions

There is an art to product descriptions. Unfortunately, many people don’t recognize how important product descriptions are and don’t spend much time on them.

Don’t be one of these people. Be intentional with your product descriptions. They key is to not make them too functional. Make sure your descriptions highlight the benefits of your product (that is how it will improve the lives of your customers) rather than just a technical description of its features.

At the same time, don’t be too verbose. Be concise. You want your product descriptions to be easy to take in, not overwhelming.

6. Simplify Where Possible

Remove all waste from the customers path. What kind of waste are we talking about? Well, that would be anything along a customer’s journey through your site that isn’t essential (and most likely serves as a distraction from the goal you want your site visitors to accomplish).

This is an especially important tip for stores that have been around for a while. Over time, sites become crowded with too much content. You add homepage section after homepage section, feature after feature, product category after product category and in the end, you are bombarding your site visitors with too much.

Obviously you need quality content, but take a hard look at your site and revisit each page to see where there are places you could trim down. Everything that remains should be relevant and valuable to the customer journey.

Less is more.

Not sure where to start? First take a look at your homepage, product organization, social sharing plugins, animations, and design elements in the cart and checkout pages (which should be particularly clean and simple).

7. Optimize the “Little Things”

Here we are talking about page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs. These basics of SEO and usability will help you in the long run and are low hanging fruit.

Write good page titles that read well and include the right key words. Make sure your URL structure for products is optimized. And don’t forget to double check that you have meta descriptions for all of your products.

8. Sell on Amazon

Selling on Amazon can be a pain to set up (although platforms like Shopify make it much easier). But, even with the pain of setup, Amazon is a great additional sales channel that can help your brand get discovered. You gain exposure to a lot more customers that you may not be in front of otherwise (like the type of people that try to buy absolutely EVERYTHING on Amazon).

Now, there is a risk in being too dependent on Amazon. But as long as you aren’t selling the majority of your volume through Amazon, then the benefits of adding this channel far outweigh the risks.

9. Ramp Up Reviews

Social proof sells like nothing else. Not only are reviews one of the most impactful trust building elements that you can have on your site, they are also one of the single biggest drivers of sales.

So make sure that you are requesting verified reviews from all of your customers soon after their receive your products.

Check out this list of ecommerce tools for some review platforms that make this process a breeze!

10. Improve Photography

Ecommerce has one unsolvable problem. Customers cannot touch the product that they are about to buy. That is why so many trust building elements are necessary in ecommerce in order to convince new customers to take the leap and purchase from you.

Without excellent photography, you are making this job of convincing your customers to make a purchase infinitely harder for yourself. Since they cannot touch the product, do your customers a favor and provide great product photography.

And don’t just photograph your products alone. Take lifestyle shots of your product in action so that customers can visualize what it will be like when they receive your product and include them throughout your site. It’s important to provide this context in order to create an emotional connection and close the sale.

11. Include Intelligent Cart Upsells

If done correctly, providing an upsell offer in the cart can greatly increase your average order value. They key is to intelligently suggest good compliments to the products that are actually in a customer’s cart.

If you are just offering the same product to everyone who passes through your store, upsells can actually work against you, distracting customers from completing the purchase with an unattractive offer.

12. Start (or Increase) Paid Marketing

Paid marketing is the formula for success for many businesses. Take a look at targeted social media ads and google shopping ads to increase your traffic (with the right people) and increase conversions.

It’s hard to get a paid marketing strategy set up and running in one day, but you can start today. At the very least, jump into Facebook and look at boosting a post. Then you can move on to Facebook ads and other channels with time as you come up with effective ads and messaging.

By the way, we can help with this! Get in touch.

13. Add Onsite Promotions

Last, but not least, run promotions on your site! Discounts are a great way to convert customers. Make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Contrary to popular belief, discounting you products does not equate discounting your brand.  You should heave a healthy and full promotional calendar.

We like a tool called GetSiteControl for running onsite promotions. It’s an easy way to message promotions through popups and notifications throughout your site.

These are our go-to quick ways to grow an ecommerce store.

What growth tips to you have? Leave a comment to let us know!

 

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