If you are new in the realm of marketing, you are welcome to learn a few eCommerce Growth Hacks that can help to boost your lead conversions. Bear in mind, that eCommerce global growth is so expansive because people are no longer confined to a single store or even 100 physical stores in a mall. They can now have access to any store they want, from new sources.
Suffice it to say, with many marketplaces offering access to numerous brands and options. That said, have you ever wondered how certain eCommerce stores make it big despite you being around longer than them? Frustrating, isn’t it? Well, now that you’ve stumbled upon this post, you won’t get lost anymore. I’ll help you double your conversions and show them who’s boss!
First of all, you need to know what growth hacking is in order to take your eCommerce business to the next level. Whether you’re already a bit familiar with the term or you’re completely clueless as to what it is, we’re here to fill you in.
What Is Growth Hacking?
Coined in 2010 by Sean Ellis, the first marketer at Dropbox, it pretty much describes a straightforward concept: every strategy you develop and implement should focus on driving growth. While growth hacking was traditionally applied to tech startups and online services, many eCommerce companies have found success in it as well.
For them, it’s all about building an experimentation culture that centers on boosting conversion rates and sales – be it by optimizing campaigns for prospects, relocating online marketing budgets, doing conversion rate optimization, and so much more. Take Amazon, for instance. They had over 20 years of rigorously testing every nook and cranny of their website, right?
And, as a result, all their efforts finally paid off when the company became the world’s biggest online marketplace. This would inspire many eCommerce stores to follow in their footsteps. By focusing relentlessly on growth, they’d regularly test new marketing channels, formats, creatives, and strategies to drive more conversions and online sales.
Proven eCommerce Growth Hacks To Double Your Conversions
In simple terms, Growth Hacking is a term coined to establish the link between growing your business and using clever tactics (hacks) that reverse-engineer that process. Using these “hacks” makes your marketing efforts faster and more effective. For instance, there’s the need to consider coming up with a clear website navigation page design, to begin with.
To fully discover what a website navigation page design entails, we need to first understand the connection between User Experience (UX) in regards to website navigation. In terms of User Interface (UI) Design, user experience refers to the way a visitor perceives your website’s usability and aesthetics.
Now that you have a clear picture of what growth hacking is, you’re probably eager to know how to get started – and that’s what we’re here for. We’ve rounded up eight simple tactics that will help you achieve scalable growth for your eCommerce business. Follow them and you’ll be seeing your conversions grow massively!
1. Create A Sense Of Urgency
One of the best hacks to encourage sales when it comes to consumer psychology is by invoking FOMO, or the fear of missing out. By playing into your audience’s desire to be included, you encourage them to make a purchase. This usually happens when something is either limited, in scarcity, or is downright an irresistible deal.
Creating urgency on your product pages is an easy way to leverage buyer FOMO. Highlight these three things and your shoppers will feel like they’re about to miss a good opportunity, thus the need to buy from you immediately:
- How much stock is left
- The time left on a limited deal
- The time left on temporary free shipping
Also, you’ll need a countdown timer to make it work. Creating one may sound complicated, but that’s not really true. You can actually do it with ease using WordPress. Here’s a quick guide from OptinMonster to walk you through.
2. Display Social Proof
On one hand, before deciding to eat at a restaurant that’s fairly new to you, you look it up on Google to read what others have to say. On the other hand, before deciding to book a place at Airbnb for a few nights, you find yourself going through all the opinions of those who’ve already stayed there.
By the same token, before deciding to spend hundreds on the latest Nike kicks, you want to know if they’re really worth every dollar by checking out reviews from actual customers. The point here is, since we don’t want to end up regretting buying something or availing of service, we turn to honest feedback from others first. This is social proof in action.
And, eventually, they play a key role in increasing your eCommerce sales. Displaying product reviews, ratings, and testimonials on your online store can help your visitors decide by giving them the information they might be searching for. It makes them feel confident about their decision since they won’t be able to examine the product personally.
That said, be sure to add customer reviews and testimonials throughout your eCommerce website. Feel free to include ratings on your homepage and About page so potential customers will see how satisfied people are with your brand. Highlight testimonials from loyal shoppers to further influence your conversion. Have them record a positive buyer experience video.
3. Add A “Share” Option In Your Order Confirmations
Just because you’ve made the initial sale doesn’t mean that your job is done. In fact, it’s just the beginning. That’s basically how it works in the world of eCommerce. As soon as someone converts and makes a purchase on your online store, try to leverage that relationship to connect with more potential buyers. Get them to spread the word about you.
How? Well, you can simply include a message on your order confirmation pages and emails — prompting your customers to share their purchases on Facebook or Twitter. You can make things easier for them by using a tool like Click To Tweet to share directly. With it, you can compose a pre-written message that they can directly share with their followers.
Alternatively, you can incentivize your buyers to share, especially those who aren’t active on social media. Offering a special discount will no doubt encourage unmotivated customers to tell their online friends and followers about your eCommerce store.
4. Send Handwritten “Thank You” Cards
Every online marketer will agree that the key to success is conversions: More people clicking on your “Subscribe” or your “Buy Now” buttons equals more leads and sales. But, when it comes to choosing a color for your buttons, well, there’s more!
That’s a highly debated topic (but, we’ll learn more later on). A gesture as simple as emailing “thank you” notes can leave a lasting impression on customers. They’ll view you as a brand that genuinely cares about its buyers, which in turn, will get them to purchase again in the future or refer your eCommerce business to others.
Along with sending a personalized note of gratitude, consider rewarding new customers with a special promo code or coupon when they mention you on social media. You’ll keep them happy and get them to come back while attracting more buyers!
5. Set Up A Live Chat Feature
Using live chat to guide buyers through the checkout process is definitely something you should do if you want to grow your conversions. Shoppers love nothing more than having an agent assisting them, answering their inquiries, and providing product details. In other words, they’re more likely to make a purchase if they have the option to connect directly.
More specifically, they’ll feel more comfortable when talking to a real live person as they browse your eCommerce store. And, guess what? Setting up a live chat is really quick and straightforward! There are tons of live chat plugins you can choose for your website. Here’s a full list of the topmost best ones to help you make a good decision. What about a push notification?
A Push Notification is yet another drive to consider. Since it’s a message that pops up on a mobile device. App publishers can send them at any time; users don’t have to be in the app or using their devices to receive them. They can do a lot of things; for example, they can show the latest sports scores, and get a user to take any action, such as downloading a coupon.
6. A/B Test Your Product Pages
As an eCommerce owner, A/B Testing your product pages should be a priority since they’re pretty much where your sales take place. Doing trial and error is instrumental in helping you determine what’s growing your business and what’s hurting it.
Experiment with a couple of small changes to the text, images, and design of your pages so you’ll know which adjustments can improve your sales. Other than that, you might also want to test using a few more techniques.
Consider the following:
- The size of your product images
- The color of your “Add to Cart” button
- Indicating whether your products are limited
- Including or excluding a trust badge
In other words, A/B Testing is also known as Split Testing in marketing campaigns. It’s the process of comparing two versions of a web page, email, or other marketing assets. And then measuring the difference in their performance. You do this by giving one version to one group and the other version to another group. Then you can see how each variation performs.
As an example, Google Optimize is a great online split-testing tool from Google that you can try. It plugs into your website and enables you to experiment with different ways of delivering your content. It facilitates three types of testing – A/B testing, multivariate testing, and redirect tests. Optimize is typically used for conversion rate optimization (CRO).
7. Personalize Your Homepage
As shoppers are getting more and more tech-savvy by the day, their buying experience expectations have increased. Knowing what modern technology is capable of, they’re looking for more than just an online store – they want brands to curate a shopping experience that’s tailored to their needs and desires.
So, here’s your next eCommerce growth hack: offer potential customers the content they have in mind. One way is by tracking user behavior to ensure that your content is specifically geared toward each of your visitors. On your homepage, for instance, you can display a certain product a visitor viewed but didn’t buy during their last visit.
Promoting items that are similar to their last purchase is also effective in bumping up your conversion rates. No need to worry if you have little to no background in building out personalization campaigns. Software programs like Bunting or Evergage can help you get the job done, and no coding skill is required.
8. Take Advantage Of Retargeting Ads
It’s not uncommon for customers to abandon their shopping carts or leave an online store without making a purchase. This is where retargeting ads come and save the day. Similar to the previous eCommerce growth hack mentioned, running retargeting campaigns involves tracking your web visitors. Ads of your products will be shown to them when they go to other sites.
Particularly, those that they added to the cart but never bothered to buy. What makes retargeting ads such a powerful tool is the fact that they highlight the items customers are interested in. Seeing exactly what they planned to buy reminds them to revisit your store and complete their purchase. Similarly, use Scroll Heatmaps in order to help optimize your website.
A scroll map (also called scrollmaps or scroll heatmaps) is specifically designed to take data on how visitors scroll through a part of a website, to help identify UX improvements, make changes, and increase conversions. This insight shows the section of a webpage that a visitor or a viewer is scrolling through the most and least.
9. Utilize A Strategic Call To Action (CTA) Plan
Are you finding that your leads and prospects aren’t taking the next step in your sales process? Whether that’s buying or simply requesting more information. The problem could be a faulty or non-existent Call to Action. Generally, a Call to Action is used at the end, or sometimes throughout a sales pitch (e.g., a sales letter). Let target clients/customers know what is next.
For sure, they’ll take the next step if they’re truly interested in what your business is offering them. To enumerate, a Call To Action (CTA) is a button tool used at the end, or sometimes throughout a sales pitch (e.g., a sales letter). Whilst, letting potential clients or even customers know what to do next if at all they’re interested in what your business has to offer them.
Realistically, it lets people know the next step to take while doing business with you. A user’s action can be a lot of things! For example, a request to download an eBook, opt-in to an email list, sign up for a webinar, register for an event, purchase a product, take a live demo/product tour, read another article, share, comment, etc.
Often, when your CTAs don’t match the intent of your audience, you’re going to see a sharp decline. Or rather, a limited lift in conversions for a given piece of content or landing page.
10. Do Through Market Research
Forthwith, Website Analytics is a way of collecting and analyzing what’s happening on your website. While covering everything from what your visitors are doing, where they come from, what content they like, and a whole lot more. By using a web analytics tool to collect data, you’ll be able to know what is and isn’t working, and then steer your website in the right direction.
Your strategic website analytics plan should now guide you to gather credible data as you do more performance research — you’d want to learn more about your competitors and your buyer’s behavior. In essence, good Market Research involves gathering information about your industry, customers, and competitors so you can make informed decisions.
On one side, small business owners use the data they collect when they create a business plan. While, on the other side, bigger companies may engage a market research firm to collect customer and industry details.
Summary Notes:
Note that, besides scrollmaps, Website Heatmaps are another quickest way to visualize and analyze large datasets. Find out what heatmaps are, how they’re created, and how you can use them to make data-driven decisions. They are powerful tools to understand what your users do on your website — where they click, how far they scroll, what they engage with, and more.
What’s more, Site Kit is the official WordPress plugin from Google for insights about how people find and use your site. It’s the one-stop solution to deploy, manage, and get insights from critical Google tools to make the site successful on the web. Equally important, Microsoft Clarity is Microsoft’s free behavioral analysis tool that you can also use for performance testing.
It enables webmasters and website owners to visualize their user behavior at scale. Whereby, they can make data-driven decisions on changes needed to optimize conversion, engagement, and retention. While there are many other eCommerce growth hacks to skyrocket your conversions, the above simple tricks are already enough to make a huge difference.
But then again, we’re not saying that you shouldn’t experiment with the rest too! Forthwith, if you’ll have other suggestions, recommendations, or even contributions thoughts, you can let us know in our comments section.
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