Have you hit a wall with how to grow your ecommerce business?
We get it — scaling your digital business is an uphill battle. Driving traffic to your website is challenging enough, but converting visitors into leads or paying customers requires multiple touchpoints.
Not all ecommerce marketing campaigns are created equal, though. That’s why we’ve compiled the top growth strategies for every online business.
These tips will help you learn how to grow your ecommerce business. Let’s take a look at some strategies you can easily implement today for some quick wins:
Use popup forms to ask visitors for their email address in exchange for a discount, free shipping offer or gift. Drum up quick sales from new visitors, or get them in your database so you can nurture them until they’re ready to purchase.
Here are a few ways to engage your visitors through popup forms:
Sure, you might be thinking: "But I already have an email subscription at the bottom of my website. I don't need an annoying popup form!"
Research shows that popup forms still work. Let's take a look at some real-world statistics to understand why popup forms are still effective for your ecommerce sales strategy.
Here at Human, we implemented a popup form for one ecommerce client and analyzed the results. Here’s what we found:
In another study, the folks at Sumo analyzed nearly two million popup forms and calculated an average popup form conversion rate of 3.09%.
A 3.09% conversion rate might seem small. But even if you’re only getting 100 website visitors per day, you’d still get 117 new leads every month!
You simply can't afford to ignore these numbers. Popup forms are easy to set up, and require minimal effort to manage once you turn them on. Don’t miss out on an easy opportunity to earn more leads and revenue.
The Bottom Line:
People buy on emotion. And a compelling, memorable brand story and appearance can help push more customers from passive visitors to raving fans.
Here are some essential brand-building tactics to get you started:
The Bottom Line:
Remember that one time you looked up how much a pet hermit crab costs?
Well, the internet remembers — that’s why you can't stop seeing hermit crab ads on Facebook. Ads for crabs everywhere.
It’s not magic. The hermit crab website you visited had a tracking pixel on it. It used cookies to follow you via Facebook ads.
People rarely buy from a website the first time they visit it. With Facebook retargeting, you can advertise to people who visit your site but leave without making a purchase.
Facebook retargeting helps you reach individuals who already demonstrated a degree of interest in your products. Once they see your ad, they might finally feel compelled to return to your website and click ‘add to cart.’
Not yet convinced? Statistics show that retargeting ads receive 76% more clicks than display ads and drive a whopping 1,046% increase in organic branded searches.
Realistically, not everyone will click on your ads. But the more often they see your brand name or products, the more likely they’ll remember you (or search for you) once they’re ready to buy.
Take note of these tips before you launch retargeting campaigns:
Check out our step-by-step guide to setting up Facebook retargeting and get started today.
The Bottom Line:
Consumers are leaning more heavily towards smartphones to shop online while desktop browsing takes a back seat.
The proof is in the data. In 2018, online Black Friday shoppers accounted for 40% of sales in what has been traditionally a brick-and-mortar shopping day. The shift to online shopping is happening every day.
Optimizing the mobile experience isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s a primary driver for growing your ecommerce business.
Have you reviewed your mobile website experience as a consumer? Evaluate the mobile experience by reviewing these items:
These items all affect the user experience and are often the source of high bounce rates.
The Bottom Line:
Retargeting ads and PPC (pay-per-click) ads are two sides of the same coin. Essentially, you spend money to nab digital real estate so you can drive traffic to your website.
Unlike organic search engine optimization (SEO), which can take months to years to see results, PPC lets you drive immediate traffic and revenue. But PPC campaigns can be very costly, especially if you aren’t testing or optimizing your campaigns regularly to ensure the best return on investment (ROI).
Here are a few ecommerce PPC tips you should know before diving in:
The Bottom Line:
Leveraging social proof is a huge part of growing your ecommerce business.
When customers need to choose between two or more businesses that offer the same product or service, reviews are often the deciding factor. What if you all have 4.5 stars, you ask? The next tiebreaker is the number of reviews!
Would you trust the opinion of 5 people who rated a business highly? Or, would you trust the opinion of 250 people who cumulatively give a business a 4.5 star average? Hopefully, your answer is the latter!
Try these tactics to garner more reviews:
The Bottom Line:
Automated email marketing can save you a ton of time and effort. But we’re not just talking about order or shipping confirmation emails.
Workflows (also called automated email series or sequences) help nurture leads based on their browsing or purchase behaviors.
With a welcome series, your goal is to:
Try including an introductory discount or offer, and nurture subscribers with inspiring brand stories, compelling testimonials and social proof or product recommendations.
The Bottom Line:
Around 70% of website visitors abandon their online shopping carts. That’s a lot of missed potential sales.
Abandoned cart workflows target visitors who add items to their shopping cart but don’t complete the transaction. These emails typically have a very high open rate — about 43% or higher, with an average click rate of 21% and 10-11% conversion rate. Not bad!
Below are some examples of awesome abandoned cart emails.
This one from Kate Spade is bright, well-designed and to the point:
Millennial beauty brand Glossier goes for cheeky and funny — perfect for their young female audience.
Google puts the pressure on with a clean, graphic design.
Most email marketing platforms like Hubspot, Klaviyo or Mailchimp have abandoned cart workflows that make setup easy.
The Bottom Line:
Post-purchase series
After customers receive their items, follow up to request reviews or feedback, or cross-sell complementary products. You can even remind buyers to replenish their products.
Check out these examples of engaging post-purchase emails.
Sephora reminds you that you might be running out — it’s time to restock.
Fifteen days after delivery, Winc checks in to see how you’re enjoying your latest selection.
The Bottom Line:
If you have stale contacts who no longer open or engage with your emails, consider adding them to a re-engagement workflow to rekindle their interest.
Subscribers often forget about the different emails they’ve signed up for, so it doesn’t hurt to nudge them and see if they’re still interested in receiving your messages. Here’s a good example from Udemy:
You can also grab their attention with a “we miss you” discount or offer to see if they’ll take the plunge.
The Bottom Line:
Following these tips will help you achieve quick wins for your ecommerce business. But if you’re serious about taking your ecommerce marketing strategy to the next level, you’ll want a dedicated team of digital marketing experts working alongside you.
Human is an award-winning digital marketing agency that specializes in growing traffic and revenue for ecommerce businesses.
We guide you through product launches, build your SEO and content strategy, leverage SMS marketing, enhance your social media presence and even develop, build and customize your Bigcommerce or Shopify store.
Want to learn more about how we can help you? Let’s chat!