With the pandemic wreaking havoc on retail sales worldwide, eCommerce has stepped up to the plate to become a viable alternative for billions of people around the world. Some even estimate that by 2040, 95% of all purchases will be done online.
Because of that, companies must find ways to establish a stronger presence online and build up their audiences while still remaining profitable in increasingly competitive marketplaces. With that in mind, let’s look at some of the best eCommerce growth hacks to try in 2021.
4 Best eCommerce Growth Hacks
1. Use List Segmentation
There are many powerful eCommerce growth hacks you could try out, with new ways to promote and grow your business emerging every year. But while possibilities are abundant, sometimes it’s a good idea to start with something you can do with your current list of prospects and customers.
Even though most online stores have some way to collect email addresses on their site, few know what to do with them. Sure, sending out an occasional newsletter is a good start, but it barely scratches the surface of what’s really possible.
To unlock the real potential of what email marketing can offer, you must provide more personalized messages to your audience using segmentation. There are countless opportunities to learn more about different groups of people on your list. When they sign up, you could add a self-segmentation option in the welcome email, tracking what people click on and tagging them accordingly.
Another way to segment is to look up the behaviors of your list on your site. The pages they visit, the paths they take, and the things they buy can all turn into tags that allow you to create more relevant email campaigns in the future.
Even though segmentation does take time, it’s the only way to get the most out of every subscriber on your list. Behind every email, there’s a real person with their own interests and obstacles, and your job is to identify them as well as possible.
2. Collect and Use Voice-of-Customer Data
Audience research is a central part of any successful business. And in the age of digital marketing, the process has become simpler and more affordable than ever before.
But despite that, many businesses rely on guesswork and assumption when crafting their offers, developing products, or optimizing the User Experience. That results in a widening gap between what the audience expects and what the business delivers, which costs a lot of sales to millions of companies worldwide.
But that’s where Voice-of-Customer data can be such a powerful game-changer. By going directly to the source, you can cut through the clutter and get to the bottom of your audience’s needs, desires, and objections. You can also discover the real language and words they use to describe their problems, which is an invaluable resource when crafting your messages and trying to sound authentic.
The best way to collect VOC data is to speak to them directly. If you can sit down with a few of your customers for 45 minutes, you can gain a ton of insights about who they are, how they perceive your product, how they are looking for solutions, and more. In addition to interviews, you could also run targeted surveys to your email list, website visitors, or external audiences, learning answers to questions you want to figure out.
Finally, if you have a specific bit of information you want to obtain, such as your site’s visitor’s job title or the product they are looking for, running a simple poll might be enough to get actionable data you can work with.
3. Test Everything
Once you have more data and direct customer insights to work with, it’s time to put it to action. Sure, you should be much more confident about the decisions you make, but it’s still essential to test them because things can go wrong (or right) for a variety of reasons.
But in order for the tests to be useful, you must be very deliberate about what you test, and how. That means running A/B split tests for a specific variable, which is the only way to learn for sure that something is working. Sure, the thing you test out may seem small and inconsequential, but it can add a few percent to your click-through or conversion rate, get more people to notice an important detail in your messaging, or even solve a UX problem that was driving down sales.
Some of the things you could test out include images, headlines, CTAs, social proof elements, navigation, checkout options, color scheme, and almost anything else you can think of. The important thing to remember when putting together A/B tests is to be very specific and have a valid question you want to answer. Over time, as you collect more data, you will not only enjoy a cumulative effect on your performance but also collect valuable data you can use throughout your marketing.
4. Make the Most of Social Proof
As you run a business, you’ll grow the list of happy customers that you’ve served. And while that’s great on its own, you should not let these positive experiences go to waste and should try to get the most of every single one. That means you should try to turn your best customers into brand ambassadors that help others like them identify your brand as a possible solution and trust that you can deliver on your promises.
The most obvious way to use social proof is to put testimonials on your website. Whether it’s your home page, your landing pages, product pages, or even a designated testimonials page, having a diverse range of praise for your products and company will go a long way in appeasing the anxieties and objections of first-time visitors. But that’s not the only thing you can do.
Another excellent strategy is to use customer success stories as content in your emails and articles. Building case studies or just sharing success stories in a newsletter is a unique opportunity to sell your product without having to talk yourself, allowing your customers to do the selling for you. This breaks down a lot of the defensive barriers prospects typically have, making it much easier to believe the claims that are made.
Finally, if you want your customers to actively participate in growing your business, you should ask them to recommend you to their peers and friends. In some cases, people will be happy to do that simply because they’re satisfied with your services.
But you might want to consider incentivizing it by offering a special discount, additional perks, or even direct financial compensation for their efforts. You could even consider partnering up with prominent social media figures in your niche, who could review your products and get them in front of a broader audience you couldn’t access otherwise.
Best eCommerce Growth Hack
Growing your online presence and improving your ROI is not an easy task. With more eCommerce businesses entering the digital world because of the pandemic, you need to get a bit more creative if you want to stand out. However, with the strategies discussed above, you should have no trouble becoming an authority in your niche and knowing exactly how to make the most out of every interaction you have with your audience.
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