Over the past 10 years, eCommerce websites have blown up. Everybody and their mother has at least attempted to create a Shopify store with either a drop shipping model or a true eCommerce model. For those that don't know, eCommerce is defined as the sale of products or services online. We have all bought something from an eCommerce store at least once in our life (probably a lot more). eCommerce, when first created, disrupted the way people shop. Now, present day, it's all we know how to do! A perfect example of a large eCommerce business that completely took over the industry would be no other than Amazon! Amazon is an eCommerce giant that grossed around $275+ billion in 2019. Now, we're not saying with our advice that you'll be the next Amazon (maybe you will), but you can definitely grow your eCommerce store and see consistent upward trending growth.
There are a few eCommerce business models:
B2C - Business to Consumer
B2B - Business to Business
C2B - Consumer to Business
C2C - Consumer to Consumer
Here are a few ways you can generate more business for your B2C eCommerce business:
Paid Ads
Paid advertising is an incredible way to generate new sales and drive more traffic to your eCommerce store. You'll hear those people that complain that paid traffic costs way too much and didn't see an ROI, but those are probably the people who have no idea what they're doing. If set-up and managed correctly, paid advertising can significantly help your eCommerce store grow tremendously. When you first use paid advertising, you aren't supposed to know much; it takes time and patience to learn the ins & out's (unless you want to put it on autopilot and outsource to a marketing company). In the beginning, don't dump large ad spend into your campaigns. We recommend starting with around $50, and gradually increasing your ad spend as you learn more about what makes a successful paid campaign versus what doesn't.
Don't spend all of your ads spend on one ad. Instead, create variations, and A/B test them. After your campaign is up, you can then analyze which ad performed better and see why. It's not rocket science - it just takes patience and diligence!
A couple of platforms that you can use to run paid ads are Google, Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram. As you can see, social media marketing is everywhere! They all operate a bit differently but generally follow a lot of the same principles.
SEO
Unlike paid advertising, SEO is not immediate. It takes time & commitment to accomplish results. That doesn't mean it's impossible, it just takes patience. SEO is the process of optimizing a website to be more visible and searchable via search engines. For example, if someone goes on to Google and searches for 'HD cameras online,' and my store sells cameras online, I want to be first! The only problem is, so does every other camera store. So, how do you rank first? Well, it's a combination of on-page and off-page SEO. It's an on-going effort of creating content, creating high-quality, diverse backlinks, guest posting, and updating your web copy.
Check out our guide for off-page SEO opportunities.
If you are consistent in your SEO approach and efforts, soon your website will be ranking for the keywords you're targeting, and outrank your competition.
To find out the status of your website's SEO, you can use our FREE SEO audit tool. It will help show you what areas of your SEO needs the most work and how to fix it.
Improve Your Funnel
Not only eCommerce websites, but all websites have a funnel. A funnel is another term for the sales process. It's also known the customer journey toward the purchase of a good or service.
For an NJ SEO company, their funnel could be something like this:
See Ad -> Visit Website -> View Services Page -> Click Call To Action -> Submit Lead Form
For an online drone store, their funnel could look something like this:
See Ad -> Visit Website -> View Product Page -> Leave Website -> Get Retargeted -> View Product Page -> View Checkout -> Go Through Checkout Process
Although the process the customer may go through is different because of the website design, as you can see, sales funnels are very similar in their nature. Something to take note of, including testimonials on your product pages, can help persuade customers to click add to cart sooner. If they can see other people's reviews on a great product, their level of trust with your brand is now increased. In marketing terms, this is called social proof! Another function that you can add to your website that helps drastically with customer service is by adding a live chat function. There has been extensive research that shows most consumers enjoy a live chat over all other forms of customer service because consumers like that they're speaking with a live agent and can have their individual needs cared for.
Simplicity at Checkout
Have you ever been on a website before where you were about to make a purchase, but checking out was such a pain in the ass that you just exited out? Yeah, that's unfortunately pretty normal. A lot of eCommerce stores, at the checkout process, will drive the customer crazy! For example, stop making people sign up! We recommend giving them the option but allow them to checkout without an account. Creating a guest checkout function is a great way to do this. Someone who does this very well is Apple.
Another way to simplify your checkout process is minimizing the number of fields you require customers to fill out in a form.
Below is a fantastic explanation by Joanna Wiebe that will show you what having too many form fields could do to your site:
If you genuinely feel as if you cant minimize your form any shorter than it is already, you can attempt to create ways to simplify for. An example would be only asking for customers to put in their zip code, and then the city and state atomically fill in. Another way would be to include a checkbox that permits customers to select that their shipping is the same as their billing address.
Up-Sell
Although this isn't a way to increase sales directly, it's more of a way to increase your average order value. Up-selling is done by taking the customers who purchase a basic version of a product, or a starter package, and before they checkout, persuade them into buying a more expensive product or adding something else to their cart. An example of this would be when you go to buy an Apple MacBook. When you are about to add the computer to your cart, they tempt you with add-ons, such as processor & storage, all at an additional price. Implementing an up-sell opportunity for your website is relatively simple, but some CMS's might require a bot more technical work. Any digital marketing agency should be able to help you. If implemented correctly, up-selling is a fantastic way to grow your average order value.
There you have it, folks! Those are a bunch of ways you can grow your eCommerce business, generate more sales and increase your average order value. All you need to do now is to get started and install these tips into your eCommerce store, and watch it take off!
If you need help scaling your eCommerce business, The Dillon Ross Group has tremendous experience in doing so, so contact us and let's get started!
