Running an ecommerce business can be both thrilling and challenging. You’ve invested time, energy, and resources into creating a product line and setting up an online shop. But if you’re not leveraging certain key tactics, you might be leaving significant growth opportunities on the table.
Today, we’re diving into six must-have strategies that can transform your ecommerce business and take it to new heights.
1. Implement Web Push Notifications
If you haven’t tapped into the power of web push notifications, now is the time to start. Unlike traditional email marketing, web push notifications allow you to engage with your audience in real-time, even when they’re not on your site. After users opt in with just one click, you’ve got a direct line to their attention—no inbox clutter or spam filters to contend with.
Why Web Push Notifications Are Game-Changers:
- High Engagement Rates: Web push notifications boast click-through rates that far exceed emails or social media. The notifications appear directly on users’ devices, making it easier to capture their attention.
- Lower Churn Rates: Opting out of web push notifications is more cumbersome than unsubscribing from an email list. Once users give permission, they tend to stick around longer, offering a low-churn, high-impact channel to communicate with your customers.
- Cost-Effective: There’s no need to design elaborate email templates or deal with complex CRM setups. Push notifications are simple to create and can be sent instantly, making them a great way to save on overhead costs while boosting customer engagement.
Consider sending notifications for flash sales, back-in-stock alerts, and exclusive offers. Whether your goal is to increase conversions, nurture brand loyalty, or boost user retention, web push notifications are a low-effort, high-reward tactic every ecommerce business should use.
2. Add Product Reviews
When was the last time you made a purchase without checking reviews first? Probably never. Product reviews are a cornerstone of ecommerce success, offering social proof and instilling confidence in potential buyers. When visitors to your site see that others are satisfied with their purchases, they’re more likely to convert.
How Product Reviews Drive Growth:
- Increased Trust: Shoppers are more likely to buy from a store that has multiple positive reviews. A product with no reviews feels risky, but a product with dozens of five-star ratings instantly builds trust.
- Improved SEO: User-generated content like reviews can improve your search engine rankings. Each review adds fresh content to your product pages, which can help improve visibility on search engines like Google.
- Informed Purchasing Decisions: Sometimes, buyers just need that final nudge to make a decision. Reviews provide valuable insights that can sway hesitant shoppers toward making a purchase. Detailed feedback about size, fit, or performance can even reduce return rates.
To encourage more reviews, consider sending follow-up emails post-purchase, offering incentives like discounts on future orders, or featuring your best reviews prominently on your product pages.
3. Offer Subscriptions
Winning a customer’s trust enough to make a sale is hard enough, so why not keep them coming back with subscription offers? Subscription models have exploded in popularity, and for good reason: they turn one-time customers into repeat buyers, creating predictable, recurring revenue for your business.
The Benefits of Adding Subscription Services:
- Reliable Revenue Stream: Subscriptions give you consistent cash flow that you can depend on, which is critical when making decisions about inventory, marketing, and scaling your business.
- Customer Retention: Getting a customer to make a repeat purchase is always easier than acquiring a new one. Subscriptions make it easy for customers to reorder without having to think twice.
- Increased Lifetime Value: With subscription services, each customer’s lifetime value (LTV) increases as they continue to renew their subscription, giving you more opportunities to upsell and cross-sell additional products.
Even if you start small with just a handful of subscribers each month, over time those numbers will add up to a steady stream of revenue. Whether it’s a subscription for monthly coffee deliveries, beauty boxes, or any other consumable product, offering this option can significantly boost your business’s growth potential.
4. Explore New Sales Channels
Relying solely on your website for sales might limit your store’s potential. To really scale up, you need to meet your customers where they are, and that means branching out to additional online sales channels like eBay, Amazon, Etsy, or Google Shopping.
Benefits of Expanding to New Sales Channels:
- Increased Visibility: Platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy already have massive user bases searching for products every day. Listing your products on these channels gives you access to a broader audience, increasing your brand’s visibility.
- Diversified Revenue Streams: By selling on multiple platforms, you protect your business from relying too heavily on one source of income. If your website’s traffic dips, you still have other avenues for sales.
- Boosted SEO: Selling on third-party platforms often results in more backlinks to your site, which helps with SEO rankings. Plus, your brand name and product listings get more exposure across the web.
When selling on different channels, it’s important to maintain consistency in branding and pricing. Use platforms like Shopify to seamlessly sync your products across multiple marketplaces, making inventory management a breeze. This way, you can cast a wider net without overwhelming yourself with the logistics of multichannel selling.
5. Offer eCommerce Gift Cards
Gift cards are a great way to attract new customers and boost sales. They offer flexibility for the buyer and can serve as a low-effort way for your business to generate revenue even if the gift card isn’t immediately redeemed.
How Gift Cards Help Grow Your Business:
- Attract New Customers: When someone purchases a gift card, the recipient is likely someone who has never interacted with your brand before. Gift cards provide an opportunity for these new customers to experience your products firsthand.
- Increased Purchase Value: Often, when customers redeem gift cards, they end up spending more than the card’s value. This can increase the average order value (AOV) for your store.
- Cash Flow Flexibility: Gift cards give your store a financial boost without the immediate need to fulfill an order. This creates cash flow flexibility, which can be reinvested in marketing or inventory.
Promote your gift card offerings around holidays, special occasions, or in email campaigns to remind your customers that gifting your products is a great option for their friends and family.
6. Build a Community Around Your Brand
Building a community around your brand is one of the most effective ways to cultivate long-term loyalty and drive growth. When customers feel connected to your brand on a deeper level, they’re more likely to stick around and make repeat purchases.
Ways to Build a Thriving Community:
- Create Engaging Content: Develop content that educates, inspires, or entertains your audience. This can include blog posts, videos, webinars, or podcasts. The goal is to provide value beyond just selling your products.
- Leverage Social Media: Social media platforms are the perfect place to foster community. Engage with your followers by responding to comments, hosting live events, and encouraging user-generated content (UGC). Contests, giveaways, and polls are excellent ways to keep the conversation going.
- Build a Loyalty Program: Rewarding your customers for their engagement can strengthen the bond between them and your brand. Loyalty programs incentivize repeat purchases, as customers earn points they can redeem for discounts, free products, or exclusive experiences.
- Host Virtual Events: With the rise of virtual events, you can connect with your audience in a more personal and interactive way. Whether it’s a product launch party, a Q&A session, or a tutorial, virtual events make your customers feel like they’re part of something special.
When you take the time to build a community, you’re not just selling products—you’re creating a brand experience. Loyal customers who feel connected to your brand are more likely to become advocates, spreading the word and driving organic growth.
Optimize Your Ecommerce Tech Stack
While these six strategies can make a significant impact on your ecommerce business, the technology you use to implement them is just as important. Depending on your platform, there are countless ways to integrate these tactics seamlessly. At WebLime, we prefer Shopify for its flexibility and the robust app ecosystem it offers.
Here are some of our favorite Shopify apps to enhance your store’s performance:
- PushOwl: This app makes it easy to set up and manage web push notifications, allowing you to engage with your audience in real-time without being intrusive.
- Judge.me: This highly customizable review app helps you collect, manage, and showcase customer reviews across your store, building trust and credibility.
- Recharge: Offering subscription-based services? Recharge allows you to automate subscriptions and manage recurring billing effortlessly, helping you grow your recurring revenue.
- Sellbrite: For multichannel sellers, Sellbrite is an excellent app that allows you to list and sync your products across platforms like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and more.
- Shopify Gift Cards: Shopify’s built-in gift card feature allows you to quickly and easily sell gift cards to your customers.
These tools are designed to not only boost your store’s growth but also to reduce friction in the customer journey, making it easier for visitors to buy, review, and subscribe with minimal effort on your part.
Conclusion: Take Action Today
Growing your ecommerce business takes more than just adding new products or tweaking your site’s design.
It requires a strategic approach that focuses on boosting customer engagement, trust, and retention. By implementing web push notifications, product reviews, subscription services, exploring new sales channels, offering gift cards, and building a community,
