13 Growth Hacking Tips for your eCommerce business

13-Growth-Hacking-Tips-for-SaaS-eCommerce-Platforms

Growth Hacking. The term sounds so cool, right? It makes one feel like a smart CEO or entrepreneur who knows the inside-out of running a business. But you’ll be surprised to know that it’s nothing but a fancy term. In a layman’s language, growth hacking means tips and techniques used by SMEs to achieve their desired conversions in an estimated period over a pre-decided budget. Statista reports first-quarter retail eCommerce sales in the US at $137.75 billion, whereas the sales for the year 2023 is expected to be $735.4 billion. These are numbers which you as an eCommerce business owner should not ignore. Instead, you should be devising strategies to bank-on the projections, thereby giving a much-needed boost to your online website. Well if you do not know how to proceed, then no worries because the eCommerce Avengers are here. We’ve compiled a list of thirteen growth hacking tips to take your online store to the next level.

FOMO is so much in! Use it.

The fear of missing out which the millennials refer to as FOMO is a super way of instilling a sense of urgency to buy in the users. Imagine, you visit an online store to purchase a novel and the screen prompted that only a couple of units are left in stock. What you’ll do — purchase it ASAP before the stock runs out! The same technique is used by the online hotel reservation giant Booking.com. They show the recent room-booking status for all its listed properties.

Ref- booking.com

Avoid a long and boring checkout process.

Time and again we’ve said this, a checkout process opted by eCommerce stores has a direct impact on sales in the form of cart abandonment. As many as 26% of potential customers abandon their carts due to a long checkout process. The reason is that a time taking process kills the excitement of purchasing a new product and customers leave the page out of frustration. So it is important to reduce shopping cart abandonment rate, which is possible by adopting a relevant checkout process.

Make the most of new-age marketing programs.

Influencer and referral marketing are like those new, cool kids in town about whom everyone is talking about. Many people who have gained a massive following on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram are becoming brand ambassadors and evangelists. All leading and newly launched brands hire these influencers for marketing products and/or services to their followers. The best part is that this form of advertising is economic and effective as compared to getting celebrities on-board.

Product reviews are a must!

As per market research, almost 95% of users read online reviews before purchasing a product. Or showcasing product reviews can increase the conversion rate by 207%. It may seem too good to be true but it is not the time to live in denial. The majority of online stores display customer reviews on the product page for the same reason. These reviews from genuine users build trust and confidence in the mind of buyers.

Include exit Intent pop-ups

Cart abandonment is like an old enemy of the eCommerce industry. To control the loss of revenue, eCommerce entrepreneurs are devising strategies to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates such as less time-consuming checkout processes, exit intent pop-ups, etc. An exit-intent pop-up is a last-ditch effort to increase conversions. When the AI detects that a user is about to leave the page, a pop-up banner covers the screen showing a discount or voucher offer.

Ref- revolve.com

Giveaways deliver wonderful results.

Trust us when we say this, whoever invented the idea of giveaways did the most brilliant job. It’s nothing but a smart concept of getting people to appreciate or advertise your eCommerce website in return for receiving a freebie. Top fashion stores use this technique by handing out free goodies to top influencers, in return, receivers write about their experience with the product. Giveaways don’t need to have free stuff only. Stores also hand out discount vouchers or give access to exclusive offers etc.

Faster page loading is important.

As many as 40% of people abandon a website if pages take more than 3 seconds to load. Not only this, there is a reduction of 7% in conversions with each second delay. These reasons are more than enough to ensure that your eCommerce website should load as fast as possible. Also, the loading speed should be the same across all devices like PCs, tablets, laptops, smartphones, etc. The only solution is taking hosting plans which guarantee excellent page load speed without any glitches, also 99.99% uptime.

Adopt the Loss Leader pricing strategy.

You must be thinking, here comes another oh-so complicated term! Lol, we agree with you but like it’s said, knowledge always has the upper hand. Loss leader pricing is a technique opted by sellers where they sell one product at a loss to stimulate the growth of other profitable products. The most commercially popular example is the printer, where companies sell the hardware at a loss but make huge profits on the ink/refills. Using this pricing strategy, you’ll be able to hook new consumers to the online store. As a result, it will increase the store’s visibility as well as sales.

Market your website’s popularity.

If your store has been featured in leading newspapers and blogs, then you need to display all the achievements on the homepage. And also don’t forget to mention awards won by your store. These mentions help in building credibility for your brand and also generate trust in the customers about your products and services.

Generate content that presses the pain point.

You must have noticed that leading companies selling hair care products never devise direct marketing strategies. They adopt indirect marketing techniques by addressing the needs instead of the product like embarrassing dandruff issues, hair fall due to dandruff, etc. The main idea adopted by eCommerce websites is to sell the problem instead of the solution. As a result, the end-users relate more to the product which in turn increases the sales.

A FAQ page is necessary.

Your customers expect more and more information about products and/or services you are selling online. And it is not possible to divert all the queries to customer support or simply rely on chat-bot. The FAQ is a list of commonly asked queries like shipping duration, payment policy, refund policy, and more. The aim should be to answer a maximum of questions because it builds a trusted relationship which will help increase the conversion rates.

Guests postings and blogs are an excellent source of marketing.

Guest posting means publishing content about your product/services on a third-party website or blog. It can be about anything like marketing uses of your product or its description, the list is endless. You can also start a blog page on the eCommerce website itself. You can post content relating to the industry your product belongs to or something on similar lines. The blogs and guest posts will not only provide additional information to the customers but also help in the ranking of your eCommerce store. Publishing SEO optimized content helps search engines like Google in listing the page on their search results.

Roll-out member exclusive deals and benefits.

We all love and rave about Amazon’s Prime membership — all the early access to deals, complementary kindle unlimited subscription, free shipping, and so much more. All the member-exclusive benefits by Amazon made millions of people subscribe to its premium plan at an additional fee. Introducing such offers not only increase revenue in the form of subscriptions, but it also generates word-of-mouth publicity for the online store.

Combining it all.

So these are thirteen eCommerce growth hacking tips that can help your online store achieve higher conversions. But in the dynamic and fast-paced environment, each process doesn’t guarantee wonders for online businesses. There have been numerous circumstances where a growth hacking tip which failed to deliver expected results for one store has done awesomely well for another store. In the end, it all comes down to experimenting and planning the future course of action accordingly. If you know any such super cool tips, then we’d love to hear from you. Please use the comment section below for sharing your ideas with us and other people.