What's Growth for an Online Store?
Growth isn't just a buzzword; it's the heartbeat of success. But what does growth mean for an ecommerce store, and how can a business owner gauge its progress? Growth encompasses more than just increased ecommerce sales figures; it embodies the expansion of reach, customer engagement, and financial prosperity. Let's dive deeper into how ecommerce businesses can track the effectiveness of their growth strategy.
Metrics that Showcase Growth:
- Revenue and Sales: The most tangible indicator, revenue and sales figures, reflect the financial upswing. Consistent or increasing revenue streams mark steady growth over time.
- Customer Acquisition and Retention: The rate at which new customers are acquired and, more importantly, retained speaks to the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and the quality of your products or services.
- Conversion Rate: This metric highlights the percentage of website visitors who purchase. A rising conversion rate signifies that your online store's design, product offerings, and user experience align effectively.
- Average Order Value (AOV): An increasing AOV suggests that customers purchase more items in a single transaction, indicating strong cross-selling or upselling strategies.
- Website Traffic: A growing number of visitors signals enhanced visibility and effective marketing campaigns. However, quality matters too – an uptick in engaged, relevant traffic is more meaningful.
- Customer Reviews and Ratings: Positive feedback and high ratings boost credibility and reflect customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Social Media Engagement: Likes, shares, comments, and followers on social media platforms can reveal your brand's resonance and reach among your target audience.
- Return on Investment (ROI): Monitoring the ROI of marketing initiatives provides insight into the effectiveness of your spending and the channels driving the most value.
- Churn Rate: Tracking the rate at which customers stop engaging with your brand can help you identify potential pain points in your customer experience.
- When tracking and analyzing all the metrics, it's vital to remember that consistency is key. A growing online store shows a steady rise in key metrics over time rather than sporadic spikes.
Effective Growth Strategy for Online Sales
According to analytics, the turnover from online retail sales will exceed 6.5 trillion dollars in 2024 and will continue to grow. This does not mean that we should say goodbye to the era of traditional brick and mortar stores. However, it will lead to fierce competition among small businesses online. This is due to a drop in inflation from 8.8% to 6.5%, which will lead to an increase in purchasing power. In this competitive environment, achieving business growth will be more difficult, but not impossible, with the right strategy and instruments. So how can you grow your ecommerce business in 2024?
Keeping Up with Trends to Accelerate Growth
Keeping up with trends can play a significant role in accelerating the growth of an ecommerce business. Trends reflect changes in consumer behavior, preferences, and technology, and by aligning your strategies with these tendencies, you can enhance your store's visibility, relevance, and appeal.
However, it's important to approach trend-following strategically. Not every trend will be relevant to your target audience or align with your brand identity. Carefully evaluate trends and their potential impact on your business before incorporating them into your strategies.
Working with Your Target Audience — Personalize
Working with your target audience and implementing personalization strategies can significantly contribute to the growth of ecommerce stores. By tailoring your approach to meet your customers' specific needs, preferences, and behaviors, you can enhance their shopping experience, increase engagement, and drive higher conversion rates.
According to statistics, as much as 91% of buyers are more likely to shop with brands that know their preferences and offer them personalized recommendations. About 65% of stores in ecommerce industry got an increase in conversion rates once they shifted their strategy toward personalization.
Personalization of offers and communication with your existing and potential customers is purely data-driven. About 83% of people don't mind sharing their data if they will benefit from it. Keeping this in mind, any ecommerce business must leverage the data received to offer an engaging customer journey.
One of the smartest ways to receive customer data and personalize their interaction is to introduce a virtual try-on feature to your ecommerce site.
The AI-powered TINT Platform from Banuba offers online try-on of beauty goods, jewelry, accessorises, and contact lenses. The artificial intelligence analyzes the buyer's facial features, complexion, and other personal characteristics to suggest the best-matching products. Besides, the smart algorithm also analyzes the input data, search, and behavior to offer personalized recommendations. According to stats, the usage of TINT increases ecommerce sales by 300%.
Taking into account the privacy issues and concerns, TINT doesn't share or stock personal data. Users can simply clear the cache in their browsers.
Automate Your Ecommerce Store
With 50% of customers expecting ecommerce companies to be available 24/7, automation plays an essential role. Automated messages, pop-ups, CRM integration, and chatbots have long been the norm of the day.
However, it is the availability of a sales consultant to help make the right choice that has always differentiated the online experience from the traditional one. Forcing potential customers to wait for an available agent or fill out a bunch of questionnaires stands a good chance of being the winner for "Highest cart abandonment rates."
Introducing a smart assistant that replaces a human being solves this problem. About 40% of people don't care if it's an AI or a human who serves them. What matters is that their problem is solved.
TINT Platform offers a smart sales consultant who will help you find the best products for you or your dear ones. Clients just have to upload a picture or use a live camera for the AI to offer the best match. Data from Banuba indicates that this feature increases the average order rate by 30%.
Enhance Your Customer Service
Excellent customer service is the heart and soul of any ecommerce business. According to research, you can forget about 87% of loyal customers if you don't provide excellent customer service. For 90% of US buyers, good customer service plays an essential role in whether they would interact with this ecommerce business or not.
Customer service is crucial at any step of your business journey. Many ecommerce platforms forget that building trustful and positive relations with their target market can:
- increase customer loyalty, which leads to buyer longevity;
- encourage repeat business;
- turn new customers into the company's advocates.
Using the TINT platform reduces the risks of human factors in communication with a potential buyer at the consulting stage. The platform's algorithms cannot be biased towards the buyer, offer the best product suitable for them, and are available 24/7.
Review Your Marketing Strategy
Effective marketing strategies enhance brand visibility, attract a wider audience, and drive sales conversions. Online marketing, with its paid ads, search engine optimization, social media, and content marketing, forms the cornerstone of these strategies, enabling targeted outreach to potential customers and effective engagement. Regularly assessing the performance of marketing tactics through platforms like Google Analytics unveils valuable insights into user behavior and campaign effectiveness for any ecommerce business. This data-driven approach empowers companies to refine their approach, reallocating resources to capitalize on what works best.
Content Marketing
Content is the king of any ecommerce website. It forms its product pages, fills its blog, and rules the reviews section. In 2023, content marketing shifted to a new direction where consumers create content, and brands use it in their strategies. According to EnTribe, almost 85% of buyers trust companies that use user-generated content in their marketing campaigns more.
With TINT, consumers have an engaging and fun way to try new goods online and share pictures or videos. You can leverage this content for Google ads, reviews, and social media publications.
Video Marketing
Using video for promotional purposes is now commonplace. Live-stream shopping is bursting into the ecommerce sphere and is in huge demand among 60% of millennials and Generation Z.
Live shopping in front of an audience can become even more rewarding and engaging with TINT. The virtual try-on feature protects users from buying a cat in a sack while reducing return rates.
Email Marketing
Crafted email campaigns possess the potential to forge lasting connections with customers, particularly when combined with loyalty programs tailored to reward regular patrons with a discount code. Too many businesses inundate customers with a barrage of messages. A targeted approach ensures that valuable information, such as discount codes and exclusive offers, reaches the inboxes of recipients genuinely interested in the content. Recent statistics reveal that most consumers (57% to 79%) prefer brand communication via email. By harnessing the power of email marketing, e-commerce enterprises can nurture relationships, encourage repeat purchases, and ultimately cultivate a loyal customer base in an increasingly competitive market.
Utilizing TINT allows companies to send out email campaigns with product samples and personalized recommendations to try without visiting a physical store. This approach cuts the path to purchase and boosts sales.
Social Media
People tend to spend an average of 2.5 hours on social media daily. It's a crime to neglect social media platforms as an additional touchpoint. An ecommerce business can use UGC in its social media posts to promote its products. A study shows that nearly 75% of shoppers explore different channels before purchasing. The more omnichannel you are, the higher the chances of a deal.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is still in its heyday, although it has transformed a bit. People have become more trusting of micro-influencers as they see them as more authentic, and their engagement is 60% higher.
You can diversify your interactions with Influencers by giving them digitized versions of products before they even hit store shelves. TINT allows you to digitize new collections in less than 48 hours, thereby reducing the cost of promotional materials and testers.
Encourage Repeat Business
E-commerce businesses can employ a multifaceted approach that capitalizes on the foundation laid by their existing customers. Personalized engagement emerges as a linchpin, wherein tailored recommendations and exclusive offers resonate with the individual preferences and purchase history of customers. Timely and relevant communication through email newsletters and targeted social media campaigns maintains a consistent brand presence, nurturing a sense of familiarity and trust. Implementing a seamless and user-centric shopping experience encompassing intuitive navigation, swift checkout processes, and responsive customer support fortifies the bond between the business and its patrons. Incentivizing referrals and loyalty programs further amplifies the allure for repeat business, as customers become advocates who actively contribute to the brand's expansion.
Be Sustainable
Sustainability is as trendy as ever, with 52% of shoppers valuing this more than during pre-Covid times. Adapting delivery routes, minimizing eco-packaging, reducing energy consumption, and selling cruelty-free products are just the tip of the iceberg. Transforming into a sustainable company can take time, but there are solutions you can implement today without putting a hole in your budget.
By eliminating testers with TINT, you can reduce your use of plastic and eliminate shipping. The entire new collection or items of interest can be emailed to you.
Leverage VR and AR
By leveraging these immersive technologies, businesses can provide unique shopping experiences accessible through mobile devices, tablets, and computers. VR and AR enhance product visualization, allowing customers to virtually try products before purchasing, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and reduced returns. Moreover, these technologies enable strategic upsells and cross sells by suggesting complementary items based on user preferences and behaviors. Valuable customer information can be gleaned from user interactions within these immersive environments, empowering businesses to tailor their offerings and marketing strategies more effectively.
Enhance Upsells and Cross sells
Cross selling and upselling are excellent instruments to increase ecommerce sales for both new and existing customers. You can either use the "Compare" button on your website or utilize a smart virtual try-on that will offer alternatives to the customer's choice.
As TINT analyzes users' preferences, it suggests complementary items or premium alternatives during the virtual try-on process, seamlessly integrating cross-selling and upselling techniques.
Grow Your Geography
To expand its geography, an ecommerce business should focus on market research to identify viable regions, adapt its offerings to local preferences, optimize shipping and logistics for new locations, leverage online advertising and social media targeting, and ensure excellent customer support to build trust and loyalty with a potential customer.
Many people fear international shopping due to the inability to try and touch the item before purchasing. Over 70% of returns are because the product failed customers' expectations. With TINT, you can attract more customers via convenient and true-to-life virtual try-ons.
If you want to grow your ecommerce business, you have to stick to a plan. Better yet, find a reliable tech partner who can cut your path to growth.
