How to Grow Your eCommerce Store and Increase Conversions

How to Grow Your eCommerce Store and Increase Conversions

The eCommerce market has been on a constant rise for the last couple of years. The pandemic has made most previous retail market predictions irrelevant, and now the eCommerce market is expected to reach $8.1 trillion by 2026

What this estimation shows is that more and more people will use this opportunity to start online businesses. And if you’re an aspiring online business owner, or already have an eCommerce store, the competition will be bigger than before.

In order to stay in the game, you’ll have to put some work into growing your eCommerce website. Although it’s not an easy task, with the right knowledge and some good practices, you can stay ahead of the competition.

This article will share seven effective methods that combined can make a powerful eCommerce growth plan for your business. Analyze them all and see how you can apply them to your site.

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Build Brand Identity

The main goal of brand identity is to help people more easily recognize your brand and have them associate it with your products. In short, brand identity consists of:

  • A distinctive logo
  • An interesting company name
  • A unique tone and voice for your brand
  • Great website design
  • Content that evokes emotion
  • Presence on social media channels

In order to create a great logo, you can either hire a professional or use a logo generator, such as Hostinger’s logo creator. Pay attention to the icons you use, and especially the color scheme, as that holds more meaning than you may think

When it comes to the website design, make sure it suits the tone and voice of your brand. If your brand image is youthful and light, the website’s design should reflect that too. In fact, that should be a constant through all platforms, social media included. 

A strong brand identity should be similar to a personality, evoke some sort of emotion, and become associated with the products of the brand in no time. 

Use Marketing Campaigns

Marketing campaigns are an effective tool to drive traffic to your website. It’s about learning who your target audience is, where to find them, and then approaching them in the most effective way.

There are different types of marketing campaigns that eCommerce businesses use, some of which include:

  • Social media
  • Email marketing
  • Content marketing 
  • Affiliate marketing

Social media marketing campaigns include finding out which platforms are popular among your target audience and building your brand presence on them. With some active engagement and paid social media advertising, you can build a following that will easily convert into loyal customers.

Email marketing campaigns work exceptionally well for various business announcements and cart abandonment recovery. Statistically, around 45% of cart abandonment emails are opened, and 50% of those lead to finishing the purchase. Meaning, the conversion rate of your business can be improved radically if you manage to collect the visitors’ email addresses before they leave.

Content marketing is more than starting a business blog. Effective content marketing campaigns include a large variety of different content, like videos, infographics, and even eBooks. This content can also be shared on social media platforms and through email marketing campaigns. 

Lastly, affiliate marketing includes collaborating with other brands and influencers in the same or similar industry. You can arrange an agreement for them to promote your products on their channels for a commission, which can increase your brand awareness and attract new customers.

SEO

SEO is key for organic traffic – the kind of traffic that is consistent and doesn’t cost you anything. It works by optimizing your website for search engines, which helps it rank higher and increases its chances of appearing on the first pages of search results.

In short, there are two types of eCommerce SEO:

  • On-page optimization
  • Off-page optimization

On-page SEO includes more technical adjustments done to a site to make it more search engine friendly, like including relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and image alt text.

Off-page SEO focuses on increasing awareness of your website’s existence on the internet, which includes link building and outreach work.

To learn more about SEO and how it can help to grow your eCommerce website, read this in-depth SEO guide.

Secure Your Site

The first step to ensuring the security of your online business is choosing a reputable hosting provider. Make sure the hosting plan you purchase comes with effective security features to protect your website from potential cyber-attacks.

Hostinger includes a free SSL certificate with all hosting packages, which is a must-have for any eCommerce business. It encrypts all sensitive data that goes through your website, like payment details and other customer information. 

All of Hostinger’s nameservers are also protected by Cloudflare. If malicious traffic is ever sent to your website, the DNS Firewall will reroute that traffic, making sure the functionality of your site isn’t affected. 

To learn more about protecting your online business and your customers, check out this guide to securing your website

Prioritize Customer Service

Even if a business is offering good products for competitive prices, chances are, buyers won’t stick around if the customer service is bad. In fact, a study shows that 90% of people will check out the customer service of a brand before doing business with them. 

Here are some easy-to-implement tips on how you can provide the kind of customer service that people are looking for:

  • Multiple methods of getting in touch. Provide various ways your potential customers can contact your business. Offer a contact page on your website, live chat functionality, provide a business email address, and potentially even a phone number. Make sure to utilize social media chats as well, when and if possible. 
  • Reply within a timely manner. Always answer your customers’ concerns as soon as they reach out to you. Even if it’s to say that you’ll look into the issue, any answer is always better than no answer at all.
  • Be nice. Even the best businesses will sometimes have to deal with discontent customers. The important thing is to always stay calm and friendly, and de-escalate the situation by providing the necessary guidance.
  • Have only one goal – to help. Whether people reach out to you with a simple question or a complicated technical dilemma, always aim to fix the issue effectively and quickly. Never leave any issues unsolved.

Good customer service can make the difference between a successful eCommerce business and an online store with no conversions. If people have a positive experience with your business, they’re likely to leave a positive review and recommend your services and products to others, which is one of the most effective ways to grow.

Conclusion

Although the eCommerce market is expanding rapidly, there are things you can do to stay ahead. 

To summarize, here is how you can effectively grow your eCommerce website:

  1. Build a solid brand identity to become recognizable within your industry.
  2. Organize marketing campaigns to get your name in front of potential customers.
  3. Make sure your website is SEO-friendly to build consistent organic traffic.
  4. Secure your website to avoid any potential risks and provide your customers with peace of mind. 
  5. Offer the best customer service, as that’s the best way to get and retain customers long-term.

With these steps, you can use the current eCommerce market growth as an opportunity to expand your business. Instead of worrying about staying behind, you’ll be working your way up to the top. 

Author
The author

Andzelika V.

As a technology enthusiast and a digital marketing specialist, Andzelika loves to help people learn about tech-related topics. When not doing techy stuff she's responsible for helping maintain Hostingers' brand by working on marketing campaigns.