It’s January – this special time of the year when we reflect on the previous year and make plans for the upcoming one.
If your New Year’s resolution is to grow your e-commerce store, fear not, it is possible!
E-commerce sales have been surging over the last years and show no signs of slowing down, with e-commerce accounting for as much as 20% of retail sales in 2018 in the UK (eMarketer).
Nevertheless, running e-commerce can be quite challenging: consumers are tech-savvy, require excellent user experience and convenience so you need to be on the top of your game.
Realising this, we selected 8 tips that we will help you boost your e-commerce traffic performance and increase revenue.
Make your store visible
Part of becoming a successful brand is making it easy for customers to find your site.
Making use of the right marketing channels is essential to drive your store to the next level. There are a variety of opportunities within the digital marketing ecosystem that helps drive visibility for your e-commerce site, from SEO, Paid Search, Social (organic & paid) and CRM.
Choosing the right channels to focus your efforts is key to driving your business forward. In our previous blogpost we covered how Instagram is making shopping easier, but that’s just the tip of the marketing iceberg. If you want to drive organic results, collating interesting blog content is key. Struggling to get a good idea for creative content? Check our blogpost “The best tools to help you generate content marketing ideas“.
Optimise your category pages
You know your best selling products and services so don’t shy away from ranking them highly on your site.
Your website should be optimised in a way so customers can easily find the most popular products (services, travel destination etc).
Don’t force website visitors to scroll endlessly. If you order your products by the most popular throughout different dropdown menus you are helping them convert which will drive your revenue higher.
Product description
The product pages are one of the most important pages on your website.
First, it informs customers about the most important details they need to know before they commit to a purchase. Keep the information clear, and concise. Ensure that the most relevant content is at the top of the description so that the most important information doesn’t get lost in communication.
Secondly, it can drive your Organic Search ranking – the more helpful and relevant a page is, the better it will perform.
Easier checkout
At the end of the day, the goal of your website is to convert a visitor into a customer so a seamless journey from beginning to end is a must!
On most sites, visitors don’t make it pass the first checkout page. You can use your website data to identify where in checkout funnel there is an issue. (oh, the magic of Analytics).
Strip out unnecessary steps from the checkout such as “Are you a new or returning visitors” – make it easier for new users to sign up or guest checkout and for returning users to sign in. There are plenty of tech solutions to make that journey easier.
If you remove any difficulties on the way to conversion this will pay off, and you can use analytics to measure the impact of changes.
Data is your friend
Well that was a smooth transition. At Taksu we believe in making data-informed decisions and so should you.
Analytics is the key to understand your website visitors and their experience online. You can use your analytics tool to understand browsing and checkout behaviour, and drive improvements in the marketing and website conversion rates.
Data empowers you to take informed decisions and there are endless ways you can use it.
For example, you can use it to understand if your customers are struggling with a new feature on the site or is decreasing conversion rates onsite. Setting KPIs, measurable through goals or metrics and assessing performance are all key to helping you understand your business and how you can scale it.
An easy way to track your KPIs is using scorecards and data boards using Databox which can easily plugin to a number of eCommerce platforms and also key analytics tools like Google Analytics.
Optimise for mobile
In 2018 52% of web traffic was generated through mobile versus 42% for desktop (Statista). Even though the average conversion rate for mobile (2.03%) is still below desktop (3.83%) (Invesp), however, it is improving every year and it’s moving towards parity. This is one of the main reasons optimizing for mobile is essential.
To have a good mobile experience is not only to create a great design but also to be functional. How easy is it for consumers to click on different parts of the website, do they have to zoom in to see a certain feature, is it easy to add items to the shopping cart etc.
Think global, act local
Once you got your website working, it’s time to act and target the right audience for your business.
You can use paid promotions for the specific locations (countries/cities/suburbs) that have the most relevant customers for your business.
Equally, you can understand which locations are struggling to convert. You can use Analytics insights to understand local shopping behavior and seasonality to drive the right traffic at the right time to your website.
Emails
Yes, we know GDPR* had a huge impact on mailing lists within Europe but we don’t think you should give up on the channel just yet.
Capturing emails throughout the user journey is important in order to build a database and to keep in touch with your loyal clients. Email recovery campaigns have been known to boost sales by 12% on a variety of ecommerce sites (GetResponse). It’s always good to get a morning e-mail with sale offers (personally it makes my day).
Creating a successful e-commerce store is challenging but not impossible. The best advice to give you is to be agile and to be adaptable to the constantly changing environment.
To see more digital marketing hacks visit our Blog here.
*GDPR (EU General Data protection regulation) came in force on 25th of May and is essentially extending consumer rights on protecting their personal data.
Companies are now required to ask for a permission before collecting data such as emails and contacting you for marketing purposes.
For more useful tips on eCommerce check out SEM Rush’s 11 Growth Tactics for Your Ecommerce Business
