Driving growth for your ecommerce brand takes a multi-faceted approach that combines a range of techniques and strategies.
If you want to take your brand to the next level by increasing organic traffic, boosting conversion rates, enhancing customer loyalty and resonating with your target audience on a deeper level, you’ve come to the right place. As an ecommerce agency with a penchant for driving online growth for our long-term clients, we’ve gathered our top 15 advanced ecommerce strategies that you can employ right now to start driving tangible growth and higher profits for your business. Let’s get stuck in!
1. Ensure you have a scalable ecommerce platform
Before you begin to implement ecommerce growth strategies, it’s crucial that your ecommerce platform is equipped to scale, grow and expand alongside your business. Without ensuring that your platform offers excellent performance, robust stability and exceptional responsiveness, even when faced with a rush of traffic, you risk your users encountering a subpar experience.
The scalability of an ecommerce platform refers to its ability to withstand surges in traffic, increased orders and an influx in demand as your business grows. Depending on the size of your business, inventory levels, number of SKUs you offer, traffic metrics and a range of other factors, you’ll need to choose the perfect platform for where your business is right now, and where you want to take it to. Take our replatforming audit to find out which platform is best for the stage your business is at and the tools you need to succeed.
2. Leverage psychographics
Psychographics is a term that refers to consumer psychology and customer demographics. Leverage psychographic research is an advanced way to ensure that your ecommerce website appeals to your target audience and resonates with them on a deeper, emotional level. It’s extremely important to understand your audience on a deeper level to ensure that all of your marketing efforts are tailored to their preferred communication style and tone of voice.
Demographics include age, gender, ethnicity, race, disposable income, employment status, education level and geographical location and can provide valuable insights into their preferences. When you are able to combine demographics with attitudes and behaviour, you’re able to build a deeper and more meaningful picture of your target customer. Psychographics include all of the above, with the additional of personality traits, spiritual beliefs, lifestyle choices and behavioural reactions.
After extensive research which could include first-hand customer surveys, interviews, data collection from analytics tools and more, you should be able to come up with a few segments of customers that can be succinctly summarised like this:
“Married men, ages 35-50, with full-time jobs, who like to sail, garden and support the local community however they can.”
or
“Single women, aged 21-29, with full-time jobs, who love spin classes, prioritise travelling and spending time with the girls.”
You may be wondering exactly how this is relevant but actually it can provide valuable insights into your customer’s other interests, aside from your products. It could pave the way for a new content pillar that allows you to niche down and grow organic traffic via a keyword you weren’t aware of previously. Or it could lay the foundation for a successful collaboration, combining two of your ideal customer’s favourite hobbies or interests. Psychographics truly expand your marketing and ecommerce horizons and provide new, innovative opportunities to grow your online store.
3. Plug any sales funnel leaks
Sales funnel leaks are one of the biggest killers of success for many ecommerce brands. Put simply, sales funnel leaks refer to any drop-off points that occur while a site visitor is travelling through your ecommerce sales funnel. It pinpoints the precise page of the buying journey that your customer has decided to leave your site, without converting. When reviewing your analytics data, ask yourself where most visitors are falling off a cliff and you can be 99% sure that there is a sales funnel leak of some sort. In order to address this, you’ll need to conduct some research before you can implement a fix.
Heat maps can be a great way to pinpoint a customer’s last touchpoint before exiting your website so this is a great place to start with your first plug!
4. Optimise your website’s UX
Optimising your website’s UX could improve your conversion rates by a staggering 400% according to recent research by Hostinger. To effectively optimise your site’s UX, you’ll first need to conduct a UX audit to identity any problem areas that you need to address. There are various areas in which UX issues can arise and you should always be aiming to delight audience at every level with:
- Usability: Clear navigation, no distractions, intuitive heading and call-to-actions
- Accessibility: Inclusive design that is accessible to those with disabilities or other limitations
- Visibility: Minimal, clear web design, high-quality imagery, uncluttered graphics
- Responsiveness: Automatically adapts to various devices & screen sizes to deliver a unanimous online experience
5. Conduct competitor analysis
Competitor analysis should be continuously conducted and monitored to ensure that you’re staying ahead of the competition. To deeply understand your competitors, you must extensively study their social media channels, ecommerce website and sales funnels to find out their strengths and weaknesses. Competitor SWOT analysis is a great place to start as this can help you to understand where your competitors are succeeding and where there are opportunities for your brand to gain an advantage.
Your SWOT analysis needs to be thorough if you want it to be valuable and should include extensive research into their product offering, price points, shipping strategy, content strategy, ecommerce website experience, sales funnels and discount strategy in order to gain a holistic view of your competitors and where your brand sits within the market. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to make strategic targets and goals to outperform your competitors and pounce on opportunities that they are yet to take.
6. Develop a content marketing strategy
Developing a content marketing strategy is absolutely essential for growing your ecommerce brand. If you want to reach your ideal audience, spread brand awareness, improve customer loyalty and engage your audience, you need to invest in a solid content strategy that is designed to serve and nurture your customers. Your strategy should include a combination of various types of content to ensure you’re reaching your target audience in their preferred content type, such as;
- Blog posts
- How-to guides
- Listicles
- Case studies
- Infographics
- Product demonstrations
- Cheat sheets
7. Use A/B testing to improve conversions
A/B testing is a brilliant way to improve your website’s conversion rates. A/B testing can be used to improve a range of things from your marketing messaging to UX design and more. Be sure to incorporate A/B testing into your regular marketing and website reviews to ensure that your site has the best chances of converting first-time site visitors into loyal advocates.
When conducting an A/B test, it’s important to set out clear parameters before you begin. For example, if you’re launching a brand new landing page for an ad campaign, testing to versions of your call-to-action copy is probably the best way to ascertain which copy is helping to drive conversions. If you create too many variables during an A/B test, it can be very difficult to decipher exactly which variable has increased conversions and you are no further forward than you were before your test!
8. Build relationships with influencers
Building robust relationships with social media influencers is a fantastic way to boost your brand’s credibility, trustworthiness and desirability in the market. Reach out to influencers who align with your brand values, aesthetic and personality, perhaps asking them to review a product, sending them a gift in exchange for posting about your product or do a collaboration that sees them curate a new collection or a new product. By nurturing relationships with influencers, you’re sure to find an engaged audience that is excited about your brand.
9. Develop personalised landing pages
Developing personalised landing pages is a sure-fire way to boost conversions, enhance customer loyalty and keep customers coming back. Personalised landing pages are also known as dynamic landing pages and ensure that site visitors see content that is tailored to their preferences, search history and more. Considering that a staggering 70% of consumers expect to encounter personalised brand interactions, it’s clear that optimising landing pages to the unique needs of each individual is the best way to boost trust and build lasting customer relationships.
10. Use an FAQ page to demonstrate your brand’s why
FAQ pages are often overlooked but they can be an invaluable tool for ecommerce growth. Demonstrating your brand’s ‘why’ is much easier to do in the format of FAQs as you can ask straightforward customers questions such as ‘what makes your brand different’ or ‘what sustainability goals does your brand have?’ Giving your brand the platform to answer customers directly. Not only do they offer fantastic value for users searching for an answer to their query, they are also a fantastic ecommerce SEO tool that can be strategically used to increase keywords and ultimately, drive organic visibility within the SERPs.
And there we have it! Our top 10 advanced ecommerce tips to drive growth for your brand. If you need a helping hand, don’t hesitate tog et in touch. We’re ready to take your business to the next level!
