12 eCommerce Growth Strategies Recommended by the Pros

Nowadays virtually anyone can start an online business. However, far fewer know how to grow it. Therein lies the bigger challenge.

Sure, according to eCommerce statistics, the market has enjoyed steady growth over the past few years, with the trend expecting to continue in the next few years. In fact, by 2025 it’s anticipated that eCommerce will account for nearly a quarter of the total retail sales already. However, to claim your share of that growth, you need to grow your business actively too.

Here’s the thing: many of the basics relating to growing brick-and-mortar stores still apply to running an online store. Customer service still matters a lot. Your existing customers are still your most valuable allies. You still want customers to spend more.

It’s the strategies to deliver great customer service, acknowledging your loyal customers, and getting customers to add more to their baskets that have changed.

When you follow the key steps to growing an eCommerce business, like identifying your target marketing, and you leverage the following strategies, you’ll be able to take your brand to the next level. From social responsibility to social commerce, here’s how you can expand and optimize your digital storefront.

12 eCommerce Growth Strategies Recommended by the Pros:

12 eCommerce Growth Strategies to Try in 2024:

1. Focus on Customer Retention

Let’s clear something up, eCommerce growth isn’t just restricted to acquiring new customers. It’s more expensive to gain a new customer than what is to get current customers to buy from your store again. As growth is as much about saving money, be sure to use opportunities like this that can help you to cut back on marketing expenses.

Paid ads are often the go-to strategy, but are costly. One strategy that remains a firm favorite that you can use to improve customer retention is rewards or loyalty programs.

Rewarding customer loyalty with points is one of the easiest ways to gain more repeat business. In addition to awarding points for purchases, you can also consider rewarding customers for joining a mailing list, sharing your social media posts, or referring a friend. Points can then be redeemed for a discount or every 10th purchase can be rewarded with a free product, for instance.

For a more innovative approach, you can try partnering with another brand. Loyalty partnerships is one of the current customer loyalty trends where two (or more) brands work on a program together to offer each brand’s customers benefits and at the same time helping them to reach a wider audience.

There are several loyalty integrations and tools designed for eCommerce websites that you can use. You can, for example, check out:

• Yotpo
• ReferralCandy
• Smile.io

You can also consider going the affiliate marketing route and set up a proper program. There are many agencies and tools that can streamline this process.

2. Increase the Average Order Value

Adding to the previous point about customer retention, it’s also key that online businesses look at how they can influence repeat customers’ purchasing behavior. One way is to encourage them to increase the average order value (AOV). In short, it refers to the average amount that a customer spends every time they place an order.

Online businesses with higher average order values have more financial freedom. This makes it easier for them to shift more resources to winning new customers.

Cross-selling and upselling are two of the most effective ways. With cross-selling, you’ll focus on recommending extra products that will complement the products currently in their cart or previous purchases. You can, for example, create a post-sales email that focuses on products frequently bought together or display such a section on the product page itself.

You can also use the principle of cross-selling and create product bundles or packages. Instead of simply leaving it as a suggestion, package a couple of complementary products together and sell them at a slightly discounted price.

Upselling works similarly, but your focus will be on motivating them to buy a more expensive, higher-end product version. For this approach, social proof will come in handy. Include customer reviews about the more expensive product that you’re recommending. If they’re going to spend more, they want to know that it’s a purchase they won’t regret.

3. Prioritize Sustainability and Social Impact

Moving forward, sustainability and social purpose will become increasingly important. Millennial and Gen Z consumers are getting more buying power and to appeal to them specifically, you’ll need to ensure that your brand has a positive impact on the environment and society.

To improve your sustainability efforts, look at your packaging and practices. Can you reduce the packaging? If you’re still using plastic packaging, is it possible to go plastic-free?

Customized packaging is also one of the big eCommerce trends currently. Is there a way that you can combine customization with sustainability?

As for your own business practices, think of ways that you change how you go about everyday tasks to reduce your carbon footprint. From going completely paperless to adopting a more flexible remote work policy, there are many innovative ways that you can add more than what you take.

While you’re thinking about ways to be kinder to the planet, also look at how you can have a more positive impact on society. Once again, start with your own practices. Is your marketing content representative of all? After you’ve double-checked that your brand’s own affairs are in order, how can you impact your local community? From volunteering for a cause to making a yearly donation, there are many ways that you reach out and make a positive change.

4. Design (and Market) for Mobile Devices

Mobile commerce is on the rise. For younger consumers, their mobile devices are an extension of themselves. Gen Zers have known the internet all their lives. Whether that’s a blessing or a curse, it has changed how they go about shopping. They use it for product research, ordering, paying, and post-sale customer service.

Your website needs to be optimized for mobile devices. It’s no longer optional.

Ensure that your website performs seamlessly across various devices. The layout must be able to adapt to fit different screen sizes. Pages must load quickly. Buttons and fonts should be larger.

As it requires technical skills, it’s best to leave this job to a web design agency that specializes in responsive web design. Look at the portfolio of various responsive web design agencies and let that guide you.

After you’ve sorted out your business website, you can also consider developing a mobile app. It can help you to attract new customers and roll out loyalty programs to help with customer retention.

Not only should you design your website for mobile devices, but also your marketing campaigns. If you’re not leveraging SMS marketing yet, it boasts a very high open rate. It’s typically used for sending notifications about delivery, order updates, payment, etc. to improve the customer experience, but it can also be used for time-sensitive marketing messages like a flash sale.

5. Optimize Onsite Experience

It’s critical that your website is designed with mobile devices in mind, but there’s more to it. From the home page to the checkout page should be designed with user experience in mind.

Start by understanding how website visitors interact with your website. For example, are there any specific web pages where they typically stop their browsing journey? If so, is there a reason?

To help you with this, you can use a heatmap tool, like Hotjar. It will give you insights that you can use to improve the user flow.

The website layout should be intuitive. It should be easy for all website visitors to understand which action they should take next to find the information they need. Get these fundamentals right and the user experience will improve.

While all the pages matter, ensuring that your checkout process is optimized for user experience is particularly important. If it’s too complicated, potential customers might just realize that they don’t really need that product after all. It’s similar to shopping at a brick-and-mortar location and you end up leaving the products on the nearest shelf because the queue is ridiculously long.

In addition to streamlining your checkout process to improve the customer experience, you can also make a few changes to help boost sales. Now is a golden opportunity to try and increase the average order value by introducing upselling and cross-selling (as long as it doesn’t make the checkout process too long).

6. Offer Various Digital Payment Options

When you’re busy optimizing your checkout process, it’s also the ideal time to reconsider the payment options currently on offer. Long gone are the days that consumers can pay only by means of credit card or bank transfer for their online purchases.

There are digital wallets, loyalty programs, buy now, pay later (BNPL) like Afterpay and Klarna, and even cryptocurrencies to mention only a few.

Speed and security are essential. Online shoppers also want convenience when it’s payment time, but not at the expense of security.

Do your homework and add more payment options. It will increase conversion rates, reduce cart abandonment, and leave your customers with a favorable final impression of the online store experience.

7. Consider Incorporating Augmented Reality (AR)

Just like more payment methods have become mainstream, so, too, have other types of technology. Augmented reality (AR) is one example that you can consider leveraging.

It can help you to create a more immersive customer experience which in return will help to boost conversions, engagement, and loyalty. Industries like fashion and home decor have used it successfully to let their customers get a better idea of how a particular product looks and how it will fit in with their real-life wardrobe or interior style.

What makes AR such a valuable tool for online businesses is that it helps to bridge the gap between in-person and online shopping. For all its convenience, online shopping still lacks one key feature — the ability to get an accurate idea of product size, color, and quality. AR can change that and bring online stores closer to brick-and-mortar locations.

Plus, it can also be a unique selling proposition. It’s still relatively uncharted territory and it could give you an upper hand over your competitors.

8. Embrace Automation

If you want to grow, at some point, you’ll need to “give up control” and automate more processes. It can be especially useful for marketing purposes. From social media marketing to email campaigns, there are various reliable tools that you can entrust with routine tasks.

For example, with the help of an email software, you can create email marketing sequences for all stages of the funnel. You can, for example, set it up in such a way that you send out product recommendations and card abandonment reminders. Automated emails like these are one of the most effective and straightforward strategies to win more customers and sales.

Friendly email reminders like these are just one example of how automation can be implemented effectively. In fact, you’re probably already using automation in many other areas that you’ve forgotten about. Why not explore other areas where it can be put to good use?

9. Continue to Use Email Marketing

Since email became mainstream, many other channels and technologies have been launched. In the case of email, though, it’s not a matter of out with the old, in with the new.

Email remains one of the most effective channels for communication as well as marketing. It can be used for transactional purposes, like shipping notifications, or more exciting content such as a weekly newsletter with the latest deals and products.

It’s cost-effective. It’s direct. It’s versatile.

Plus, with the help of email marketing automation tools, why wouldn’t you want to continue using one of the preferred channels for communication?

10. Market More on Owned Channels

Along with email, your website (and a mobile app if you have one) remain a cost-effective marketing channel. The big benefit is that as you “own” these channels, you have much more control. Algorithms don’t come into play, at least not for email.

Email, a business website, and mobile app, also help you to gather valuable customer data. Moving forward, first-party data collection will become more important and you’ll want to leverage all the channels that you can to get data to refine your marketing strategy, segment, and personalize.

After all, you already had to invest so many resources into optimizing your eCommerce website, why not use it to its full advantage?

11. Implement Social Commerce

Basically, social commerce refers to when you sell products directly on social media platforms. Instead of relying solely on your standalone eCommerce website, explore if you can use other platforms like Instagram too.

Depending on your target audience, you can even consider using livestream shopping. It took off during the pandemic and thanks to its engaging nature shoppers have caught on.

Along with becoming more sustainable (and letting others know about everything you do for the planet, of course), social commerce is key to attracting younger online shoppers. It’s great for sharing more authentic content and improving brand trust.

12. Think Long-term SEO

Just like email marketing, search engine optimization is still relevant. It also ties in with the idea to start using your owned media more for digital marketing.

Not only are paid ads costly, but they often get ignored. Instead, more brands are getting found via search engines.

While all of the other strategies take time, you might find that SEO will test your patience more.

It’s not a quick fix.

You’ll need to rely on well-written content that’s based on keyword research. This step alone is time-consuming. Then, the content still needs to do its thing.

Start by making sure that your home page and product descriptions are optimized. Then, if you don’t have a blog yet, consider starting one or a page on your website where your customer base can find educational resources.

Wrapping Things Up

While this article hasn’t discussed omnichannel marketing as a separate strategy, this is what it basically boils down to. You’ll need to incorporate various channels into your digital marketing strategy to help you grow your brand. If your brand grows its presence online, so too will its sales.

It’s not always about introducing new channels and customers, though. Customer retention should be a priority. If all your attention goes towards wooing new customers, marketing will become an unsustainable expense.

Much like in real life, the secret is to look for things in your past that can still serve you well in the future. That’s when real growth happens.

That said, if you get fixated on the past, you’ll get stuck. And, a business that’s stuck can’t grow.

About the Author

Koba Molenaar

Writer

Koba Molenaar brings nearly a decade of rich experience in content writing, specializing in digital marketing, branding, SaaS, and eCommerce. Her passion for helping brands, from solopreneurs to established companies, connect with their audiences shines through her work. As a member of the Golden Key International Honor Society, Koba’s commitment to excellence is evident in her work, showcasing her as a relatable and knowledgeable voice in the industry.