All growth is not created equal. Since 2020, eCommerce and online shopping have taken center stage among retailers. Even some major names are closing brick-and-mortar locations to focus more on their online presence. So, how do you achieve growth with your eCommerce business as a small or mid-sized retailer? First of all, you need to know what kind of growth to focus on. You don’t want to just grow your business; you need healthy growth so your business’ success will be sustainable. What do we mean by healthy growth? If you’ve ever tried the latest and greatest “growth hack” or feel like your growth has more dips than it does peaks, you don’t have healthy growth. Most businesses want fast growth. They want to snap their fingers and have a massive spike in sales. Not everyone can go viral and see an increase in sales overnight. If you’re one of those businesses that have gone viral, is it sustainable? Having one month of huge sales, followed by months of almost nothing, isn’t going to give you reliable and consistent growth. How do you achieve healthy growth? Great question! Let’s take a look at the best ways to achieve it.
Unhealthy growth, or growth hacking, can come from all of those ads on your social feeds that say, “I can show you how to make a million dollars today!” This might sound amazing, and who doesn’t want to make a million dollars in a day? However, over and over, businesses that pursue overnight growth end up seeing no growth at all. Healthy growth is understanding the fundamentals of your business, your target audience, and best practices. Healthy growth can be very “boring” to map out. You need to look at things like consistency, discipline, good leadership, attention to detail, and what will drive your long-term success. The three most significant factors to healthy eCommerce growth are:
- Acquisition
- Conversion
- Retention
Working on these factors of your business is the key to achieving healthy growth for your site. You want to make sure all three of these areas are stable, strong, and optimized to bring the most value to your business. Here’s a breakdown of what each area should focus on.
Acquisition is about driving business to your website. This can be done through social media, PPC ads, and other digital avenues of driving traffic to your website. You want to make sure your brand is well represented with any content you create to drive traffic. Your brand’s voice and story should be well-represented, so potential customers can genuinely relate to your brand. One way to do this is through social media. But, not all social media platforms are created equal either. You need to know who your target audience is and where they are. Targeting an age group of 40 and up will most likely be on a different platform than an age group of 18-35. This doesn’t mean you should ignore certain platforms, but remember who your target is. Driving traffic to your site doesn’t mean anything if they don’t convert to a paying customer.
This brings us to our next factor, conversion. This is where the growth happens. You need your site to be appealing, easy to navigate, and eye-catching. Video has come a long way in the past few years. Having videos of your product to replace some of the photos is a great way to draw your customer’s eye to what you want them to purchase. Technologies such as AR, VR, 360-degree videos, and other innovative technologies can help you be one step ahead of other eCommerce sites. Using cutting-edge technologies and interactive live chat features will keep your customers on your site longer, increasing your chances of converting them to paying customers. Testimonials, positive recommendations, and user-generated content are great ways to build brand loyalty and trust. This helps with our final area of focus, retention.
Retention is about maximizing your customer’s lifetime value and turning them into loyal customers who will return and bring in repeat business and even referrals! How do you do that? You can create a community for your customers and turn them into fans. It’s easy for eCommerce brands to do this through social commerce platforms and even their websites. Building a brand community will foster customer loyalty and authentic relationships with your customers, going way beyond just brand awareness. When your customers can post and share content and see their content on a brand’s social pages, it will encourage them to share and keep creating user-generated content, which is the best content you can get! This will also help customer service, market research, product research, and keeping in line with what your customers are asking for.
So ditch the “get rich quick” ideas of growing your eCommerce business, and create eye-catching content to ACQUIRE more traffic on your website–Make sure your website’s UI/UX is great to convert users to customers — then foster genuine relationships with your customer to maximize their brand loyalty. Doing all of this will bring you consistent, sustainable, and healthy growth. If you need any help with your online presence or eCommerce growth, reach out to Pareto PPC today! We’re your go-to for digital campaigns!
