Global eCommerce sales are expected to surpass $8 trillion by 2027.
To put this into perspective, worldwide eCommerce sales were $4.29 trillion in 2020.
eCommerce brands have endless growth opportunities, but staying afloat can be challenging for many businesses.
So, how do you stay on top?
Below are the most effective ways to improve your eCommerce growth strategy and drive sustainable growth to your brand.
Does Your Brand Need An eCommerce Growth Strategy?
Yes, brands serious about moving forward and not losing market share need an eCommerce growth strategy.
The reality is that every year, more and more people choose online shopping over visiting physical stores.
Most of us lead fast-paced lives and we appreciate the convenience of purchasing something in just a few clicks.
The number of digital buyers continuously grows, and we shouldn’t be surprised if global online sales surpass $6 trillion by the end of 2024.
But what does this mean for your brand?
Well, one thing is certain — you need a sound eCommerce growth strategy to make sure your brand stands out in the competitive and intense eCommerce market.
We’ll soon dive into the most important eCommerce growth strategies for 2024, but first things first.
Top 20 eCommerce Growth Strategies For 2024
To enhance your eCommerce business, we recommend the following 20 eCommerce growth strategies for 2024.
1. Invest In SEO
96.55% of content gets no organic traffic from Google.
The competition in the digital market is fierce, and having your brand rank high in search engines is crucial for business success.
We all know that most people click on top results in search engine result pages (SERPs). Research has shown that 54.5% of all clicks go to the top three Google search results.
Creating a strong SEO strategy boosts brand awareness and improves your rankings, resulting in higher organic traffic.
SEO optimization ensures your site’s content resonates with your target audience, delivering exactly what they want.
Having a solid SEO plan can also save you money.
By driving organic traffic, you can reduce the need for pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaigns, which can be expensive.
Although SEO strategies take time to show results (usually a few months), the benefits you get from a well-thought-out SEO plan are long-term.
If you consistently appear at the top of SERPs, the number of your website visitors will continue to increase over time.
Another important thing to highlight is that most SEO platforms can provide data regarding user behavior, demographics, preferences and their search patterns.
These insights are invaluable for refining your strategy and planning future marketing efforts.
2. Implement AI
Running an eCommerce business doesn’t leave you much (if any) room for interaction with customers.
You can’t chat with them as you would in a physical store, and that lack of contact can negatively impact the UX on your site.
What can you do about it?
Make the most of AI tools and use them to mimic the interaction you’d have with customers if you were face-to-face with them.
73% of businesses already use or plan to use AI-powered chatbots in 2024.
You can also use AI to add chatbots to your eCommerce website and have them instantly reply to customers’ questions and/or concerns 24/7.
While not everyone may need assistance, you want to do everything you can to ensure a seamless shopping experience for all customers. AI offers more than just installing chatbots on your site.
There are AI tools that monitor users’ behavior and transactions, and they can detect potential security risks and fraudulent activities.
When an AI tool detects a fraud, it can send you real-time alerts and instantly block suspicious activities.
3. Build Influencer Partnerships
Building influencer partnerships is a strategy that can significantly boost brand awareness and conversion rates.
Influencers usually have strong relationships with their followers and their recommendations and promotions are often more persuasive than other forms of marketing.
Every influencer caters to a specific audience, and partnering with influencers whose followers match your target demographics will likely allow you to reach the market that’s interested in your product.
When people see that a popular figure is using and endorsing a product, that can be all the proof and incentive they need to purchase the product for themselves. And this is a fact you can capitalize on.
Influencers are often creative in terms of promoting brands with engaging and interactive content. They do live streams, Q&A sessions and giveaways, all of which can help bring more customers your way.
TikTok is by far the most popular influencer marketing channel and it’s used by 69% of brands using influencer marketing. It’s now ahead of Instagram (47%), YouTube (33%) and Facebook (28%).
Another good thing about influencer marketing is that it can be cost-effective, compared to other forms of marketing. If your budget isn’t high, you can first pair up with micro-influencers, and slowly progress to forming partnerships with social figures with bigger followings as your budget increases.
4. Personalize Recommendations
Personalized recommendations ensure your customers see content that matches their interest.
As a result, their shopping experience becomes more engaging, the average time they spend on your site grows and your conversion rates are likely to increase.
In most cases, satisfied customers become returning clients, since they appreciate discovering an online store that offers them the products of their interest.
Here’s an example from Amazon of what personalized recommendations may look like:
Or like this:
Personalized recommendations provide insights into customer preferences and trends, allowing you to always stay at least one step ahead and forecast demand, avoiding the risk of running out of popular items.
5. Benefit From Social Proof
90.6% of consumers read reviews before buying online.
Peer influence is powerful and, the truth is, most people are influenced by the opinions of others, including yourself, on a particular matter, person or a thing.
That’s just the way we humans are.
Although we usually associate peer influence with something negative, that isn’t always the case.
That’s especially true when it comes to good products.
If people love your goods — everyone should hear about it!
When potential customers read positive reviews, ratings and testimonials from other customers, it builds trust and reassures them about the quality of your products.
Positive social proof can minimize buyer hesitation, especially if your brand is still not well-known among your targeted audience.
Positive ratings and reviews can significantly boost your conversion rates as they encourage visitors to make a purchase.
Think of Sephora or Amazon.
Both eCommerce giants enable registered users to not only leave product reviews but also share product photos and videos, making social proof more trustworthy and reliable.
Besides peer influence, there’s another psychological element to sharing social proof — activating visitors’ fear of missing out (FOMO).
Seeing how other people are benefiting from a product or a service can trigger people’s FOMO, prompting them to make a purchase. But more on this in a sec!
6. Implement Live Chat And Text Message Support
We discussed earlier the importance of using AI to offer support to your customers and imitate live interactions you’d have with them in physical stores.
Aside from chatbots and virtual assistants, you can also include text message support to provide immediate assistance to customers in real-time.
If customers encounter an issue while shopping without assistance to resolve it, they are likely to abandon their cart.
With live chat and/or text messages, you can address clients’ concerns and encourage them to go through with their purchases.
Interactions with your customers can provide you with valuable insights, such as the common issues on your site.
You can use that information to make necessary changes to improve customer satisfaction.
Live chat and text messages can both be personalized to include customer data, but for a real personal connection, you can consider hiring live agents to answer customer inquiries.
7. Utilize Social Media
More than 5.04 billion people use social media platforms.
Integrating social media into your eCommerce sales strategy is essential for increasing brand awareness, engaging with customers and, ultimately, driving sales.
With over 3 billion users, Facebook is the most popular network, followed by YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp and TikTok.
You can be active on all major social platforms and use them to amplify your brand’s visibility or focus on the most popular channels among your target audience.
For instance, the majority of TikTok users are between the ages of 18 – 24 and 25 – 34, and this platform is the way to go if you wish to pivot to a young demographic.
Speaking of TikTok, this platform is a true champion of online shopping.
Reports show that in February 2024 alone TikTok sold a whopping 68.1% of social shopping gross merchandize value (GMV).
So, aside from mindlessly scrolling through social media content or looking for inspiration, people are more than willing to shop on social platforms.
This is particularly true for beauty products, jewelry and cosmetics.
But even if Gen Z isn’t your target market and your products don’t fit into the mentioned popular categories, you can still benefit from social media.
You don’t have to sell products on socials, but rather use them to:
- Interact with your customers
- Run personalized ad campaigns
- Collect insights about your audience
- Provide customer support
- Encourage people to visit your website to boost rankings
- Build a community that loves and supports your brand and interact with them on the regular
8. Run E-Mail Marketing Campaigns
Did you know that by 2027, the global e-mail marketing market is projected to reach a value of $17.9 billion?
E-mail marketing affects people’s purchasing decisions, and running a well-planned email marketing campaign can help you drive sales.
Sending e-mails to your subscribers is an excellent way to distribute content such as videos, newsletters, articles and product announcements, which could bring more traffic to your site.
You can also promote discounts as well as send order confirmations.
E-mail marketing is a convenient way of encouraging people to convert and it’s relatively inexpensive compared to other marketing channels.
When inviting customers to sign up for your email and/or newsletter, you can offer discounts on their first order, to encourage them to press that “Buy” button.
The important thing to remember is this — focus on creating personalized e-mails as that can increase your click-through rates. In fact, 83% of consumers said that they prefer to receive hyper-personalized e-mails.
Here’s how Spotify did it when sending their “Spotify 2022 Wrapped” e-mails:
Depending on which artists you listened to the most, you’d get a personalized e-mail inviting you to browse those artists’ shops and get the merch that matches your taste.
E-mails can significantly boost your brand because, in terms of return on investment (ROI), e-mail marketing is far superior to social media and other promotional channels.
Research shows that e-mail drives a ROI of $40 for every dollar spent for brands in the US and $43 for brands in the EU.
With this in mind, make sure your e-mail communication is consistent. Send e-mails to your subscribers regularly, to keep your brand at the top of their minds.
9. Run Retargeting Campaigns
Retargeting campaigns target potential customers who have shown interest in your products and/or services but haven’t made a purchase.
The philosophy behind retargeting campaigns is simple — if people keep seeing your ads, they’ll think about your brand. The more they think about it, the higher the chance of them visiting your site and purchasing products.
You can tailor retargeting campaigns to display ads based on specific products visitors viewed previously, making the ads more relevant and personalized.
If you keep engaging with your customers through retargeting campaigns, you can encourage repeat purchases and further increase your revenue.
Another thing that’s worth mentioning is the cost-effectiveness of retargeting.
Companies usually pay between $0.66 to $1.23 per click for remarketing, while the average cost-per-click (CPC) for Google search ads amounts to $4.66.
Retargeting complements other marketing efforts, such as email marketing and social media campaigns. Combined, these three strategies can bring you more customers and increase your conversion rates.
10. Create Short-Form Videos
According to HubSpot’s research, short-form video is a ROI powerhouse above any other type of content.
Successful brands understand that they need to fully capture people’s attention to get their message across, and engaging short-form videos are just the way to achieve that goal.
Short-form videos explain in a matter of seconds how something works or what some product looks like, helping viewers see how they could benefit from that item.
Another great thing about videos is that they can vividly convey your brand’s personality, helping you become more relatable and bringing you closer to your audience.
When creating short-form videos, make sure that they are mobile-friendly (e.g., use vertical formats) because everyone consumes content quickly, especially mobile users.
Another great thing about short-form videos is their versatility.
You can use them in your e-mail marketing campaigns, share them on social channels, embed them on your website, etc.
Plus, short-form videos can quickly go viral, and that can immensely increase your brand’s visibility.
11. Offer Subscription Services
Offering subscription services to customers can be highly beneficial for your brand.
With a subscription plan, you ensure consistent monthly or yearly revenue streams.
When you know the exact amount you’ll receive from subscriptions, you can plan your finances effectively.
Aside from financial benefits, subscriptions help build customer loyalty.
But keep one thing in mind — satisfaction is temporary, and people get bored easily. If you don’t continually offer something new, they may stop paying for your subscription plans.
In an article titled Bad Is Stronger Than Good published in the Review Of General Psychology article, a team of researchers wrote:
“If satisfaction and pleasure were permanent, there might be little incentive to continue seeking further benefits or advances. The ephemeral nature of good feelings may therefore stimulate progress (which is adaptive). If bad feelings wore off, however, people might repeat their mistakes, so genuine progress would best be served by having the effects of bad events linger for a relatively long time”.
The human brain is not wired to feel content for a long time and it’s constantly running on the “hedonic treadmill.”
That’s why the variable is so important to keep insatiably curious customers content and have them renew their subscription plans.
Make sure to offer your clients something new from time to time — don’t let them get bored!
For example, you can change features included with a particular plan, offer awards, experiment with the design, etc.
12. Run Loyalty Programs
Running loyalty programs is crucial for customer retention.
According to Gartner, businesses that currently don’t have loyalty programs will establish them by 2027 to shore up first-party data and retain high-priority customers.
Loyalty programs reward customers for the love they have for your brand and all the purchases they’ve made thus far.
With all the money spent on marketing campaigns, the costs of acquiring new customers are usually higher than customer retention costs.
Certainly, this doesn’t imply neglecting customer acquisition. Instead, it emphasizes that acknowledging customer loyalty doesn’t require high costs and can enhance your profitability.
Loyalty programs incentivize repeat purchases and make customers spend more to earn rewards.
Plus, many loyalty programs include referral incentives, encouraging existing customers to refer new customers in exchange for rewards.
Even without referral incentives, a satisfied loyalty program member is likely to share their positive experience with others and help you gain more customers through word-of-mouth marketing.
13. Run Time-Limited Promotions and Sales
Running time-limited promotions and sales allows you to tap into people’s FOMO.
British psychologists described FOMO as a “pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent.”
Using scarcity and offering limited-time promotions can motivate people to act fast.
You can add countdowns, create flash sales, promote free shipping during a specific time period, include free gifts, leverage holiday seasons, promote discounts to prevent cart abandonment and more.
When customers feel that they might miss out on a great deal, they are prone to making impulse purchases.
For instance, The New Yorker is currently promoting a 12-week subscription for $6 instead of the regular $29.99 and they’re including a free tote to further incite people to subscribe:
By running regular promotions and building buzz around them on social media, you can motivate your target audience to keep purchasing on your site.
Moreover, you’re also likely to attract new customers since everyone likes a good deal that saves them money, don’t they?
Time-limited offers and sales are particularly convenient when you wish to get rid of an old inventory and when you want to introduce a new collection, to test how people react to your latest products.
14. Optimize Mobile Shopping Experience
Mobile internet traffic accounts for almost 60% of worldwide web traffic.
This means that a significant portion of users make purchases using their smartphones, which makes mobile optimization a must.
Google uses mobile-first indexing, and this means that easy navigation, fast load times, and a responsive website are paramount to ensure high SERP rankings.
The great thing about mobile optimization is that it allows your consumers to browse your site and your store anytime and anywhere as long as they have an Internet connection. That, of course, increases the likelihood of them making a purchase.
If your budget allows it, consider creating an app for your brand.
Many brands, both high-end and more affordable, have apps that ensure a faster and easier shopping experience for their users.
Having an app helps strengthen your brand and boosts customer purchases.
For example, you can create exclusive deals for app users and encourage people to use the app frequently.
15. Ensure A Seamless Checkout Process
Ensuring a seamless checkout process seems like a given, however, overly complex or lengthy checkout procedures can frustrate customers and lead to abandoned carts. The fewer steps needed to complete a purchase, the better.
A seamless and transparent checkout process helps build trust with customers and reassures them that their personal details and credit card information are safe.
We’d recommend enabling customers to save their payment and shipping information for future purchases as that saves them time when they come back and enhances the UX on your site.
Make sure that you offer several payment methods, such as credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay to give customers a choice and cater to different preferences.
16. Make Data-Driven Decisions
Successful businesses don’t guess — they base their decisions on thorough research and data.
Monitoring, collecting and analyzing data provides you with everything you need to know, including:
- Market trends
- Customer behavior
- Customer preferences
- Customer demographics
- The way users interact with your site
- What products they spend most time exploring
- How much time customers spend on each page
With data, you can better target the desired audience and tailor your plans to customers’ preferences. That, in turn, increases customer satisfaction and enhances sales.
Data-driven decisions save you money and time, allowing you to allocate your resources to the most effective marketing channels and strategies.
If you keep track of important data in real-time, you can quickly notice areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to your strategy to ensure your customers are happy.
Data analysis is important for another big reason — it can ensure your competitive advantage.
Data also helps you identify potential risks and predict future trends early on, allowing you to gain an edge over competitors.
Data-driven insights provide a clear understanding of what business strategies work, and as such are crucial for ensuring brand success.
17. Benefit From Automation
Many businesses rely on automation to facilitate, speed up and improve their day-to-day processes.
In terms of eCommerce businesses, one of the areas where automation is key is inventory management.
This process allows for real-time tracking of inventory levels, so you always know if you’re about to run out of a specific product.
Automation also helps ensure that all orders are processed quickly, reduces delays and human errors and enables shipment tracking.
Automating email marketing campaigns is another way of ensuring communication with your customers.
You can personalize automated emails and use them to send welcome emails, promotions and post-purchase follow-ups. With automated emails, you can remind customers about items left in their cart, encouraging them to complete their purchase.
18. Monitor And Analyze Competitors
To stay current and, more importantly, ahead of the curve, it’s paramount to perform competitor analysis.
You need to understand their strengths and weaknesses to identify areas for improvement, such as customer care, marketing campaigns, and potential new markets for expansion.
By observing your competitors, you’ll notice the products and services that are popular among your target users, and, more importantly, identify gaps in their offers.
That way, you can bring something new to the market that could help you gain more customers.
Aside from tracking competitors’ product offers, you should also know their pricing.
Once you’re aware of that, you can set competitive prices for your products and decide on discounts and sales, maintaining a competitive edge in the fierce eCommerce market.
19. Collaborate With Reliable Shipping Partners
After putting in all the hard work and receiving customer orders, it’s crucial to ensure smooth product delivery.
That’s why it’s important to collaborate with reliable shipping partners who will deliver orders to your customers on time and won’t damage the goods during transport.
Timely deliveries help enhance customer loyalty and build a positive reputation for your brand.
To choose a reliable shipping partner, research reviesws and make sure that they offer customer support and provide real-time order tracking.
Check also if they can handle peaks during sales and holiday seasons.
20. Offer Free Shipping
For 76% of online shoppers, free shipping is the most important thing that will lead them to place an order on an eCommerce site.
To boost customer satisfaction, offer free shipping by including shipping costs in your product prices.
Free shipping attracts customers, increases sales, and reduces cart abandonment rates, ultimately generating more revenue for your business.
6 Things To Consider Before Implementing An eCommerce Growth Strategy
Implementing an eCommerce strategy requires careful planning to ensure success.
These are the six key elements to consider before developing an eCommerce growth strategy.
1. Assess Your Current Performance
Before you start doing anything new related to your brand, you need to understand its current performance.
You should examine:
- Website traffic
- Sales data
- Customer behavior and check their feedback
That way, you can spot potential weak spots.
Once you know these, you can identify areas for improvement, set realistic goals, and develop an effective eCommerce growth strategy.
Understanding your current performance also helps you realize where to start and which aspects of your business require the most resources.
2. Understand Your Target Audience And Their Preferences
77% of customers like brands more if they seek out and apply customer feedback.
Prior to launching a new eCommerce sales strategy, it’s paramount to do market research to understand your target audience’s demographics, behavior patterns and preferences.
Once you’re familiar with those, it’s easier to tailor a more personalized strategy that caters to your target market.
You can:
- Conduct surveys to get feedback from your target audience about their preferences and needs
- Use platforms such as Google Forms to collect customer responses and analyze data
- Use Facebook Insights or X-Analytics to track user demographics as well as to monitor likes, comments and shares to understand customers’ preferences
3. Analyze Competitors
Competitor analysis is a must regardless of your niche.
When you keep an eye on what your competitors are doing, you can understand how your brand compares to them.
You should:
- Analyze competitors’ position on the market
- Their pricing and product offers
That way, you’ll be able to identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and discover ways to do better than them.
4. Evaluate Resources And Your Budget
Knowing your resources ensures that your eCommerce strategy can be fully executed and that you stay within your budget.
When you know how much money you can spend, you can prioritize different parts of your strategy based on potential returns.
Assessing your budget before implementation prepares you to manage unexpected costs and setbacks, ensuring your business can handle unforeseen circumstances.
5. Set SMART Goals
Those who set goals are nearly four times more likely to have success than those who don’t set goals.
Without a clear goal in mind, there’s no point in creating a strategy.
Clearly defined objectives provide direction for your brand and your eCommerce strategy, especially SMART goals.
SMART goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
For instance, instead of setting vague goals such as — I’d like to increase sales — be specific and choose this approach instead — I want to increase sales of X and Y products by 20% by the end of the next quarter.
Knowing exactly what you want to achieve is crucial when deciding how to achieve it.
6. Identify Risks
When you identify potential risks in advance, you can develop ways to overcome potential financial losses and create plans to soften the impact of such losses on your brand.
Identify risks such as:
- Market fluctuations
- Supply chain disruptions
- Tech challenges
Then create contingency plans to address these potential risks so that you can quickly go back to your normal day-to-day business despite the issues you may have faced.
The 5 Most Important KPIs To Track Business Growth
Monitoring key performance indicators is crucial because they provide an overview of your eCommerce business’s performance and growth potential.
We recommend focusing on the following KPIs.
1. Conversion Rates
Conversion rates (CR) indicate how effective your website is in turning visitors into paying customers.
A higher conversion rate means more site visitors are purchasing from you.
Tracking CR helps identify which aspects of your content and marketing campaigns are working and which need improvement.
2. Average Order Value
Average Order Value (AOV) measures the average amount of money customers spend per order.
This metric helps you understand customer purchasing behavior.
The more money customers spend per transaction, the higher the AOV and your revenue.
3. Cart Abandonment Rate
A high cart abandonment rate (CAR) usually indicates that there’s an issue with the checkout process.
Identifying and addressing these problems with, for example, retargeting ads and email reminders can help you reduce CAR and increase CRs.
The lower the CAR, the better.
A low CAR generally means a smooth, customer-friendly checkout process.
4. Return On Investment
Return on investment (ROI) measures the overall efficiency of your eCommerce investments, by comparing their cost to the gain or loss they brought to your business.
Tracking ROI helps you identify which strategies provide you with the highest returns, helping you understand which activities to focus on most.
High ROI indicates that your business is generating significant returns on investments, which is essential for your business’ success.
5. Customer Lifetime Value
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a key metric that estimates how valuable a customer is for your brand throughout the entire duration of your relationship.
CLV refers to the total revenue your business can expect from a single customer.
To calculate it, you can use the basic CLV formula:
CLV = (Average Purchase Value) x (Average Purchase Frequency Rate) x (Customer Lifespan)
Where:
- Average purchase value refers to the total revenue divided by the number of purchases
- Average purchase frequency rate is the number of purchases divided by the number of unique customers
- Customer lifespan refers to the total number of years a customer buys from your company
A higher CLV means more long-term revenue from each customer, which is crucial for sustainable business growth.
Understanding CLV allows you to calculate your budget for a customer retention marketing strategy and determine how much money you can spend on acquiring new customers.
How To Create The Best eCommerce Growth Strategy For Your eCommerce Brand?
Creating an eCommerce growth strategy takes a lot of extensive research, careful planning and understanding what works best for your brand.
Moreover, it demands expertise in many fields and it’s usually a result of several experts working together to create a plan that will grow a brand.
If you want to create your own eCommerce growth strategy, start by defining your goals. Then, concentrate on implementing two or three strategies from our list that align with those goals.
Use tools such as Google Search Analytics to keep track of progress and be quick to make necessary tweaks if needed.
Grow Your eCommerce Brand With Digital Silk
Hiring a professional web design agency ensures that a team of experts devises an eCommerce growth strategy for your brand.
Digital Silk’s professionals possess expertise in various fields that your eCommerce brand can benefit from, including:
- SEO
- eCommerce web development
- Shopify development
- Magento development
- custom web design and development
- digital branding
- digital marketing
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