Every business goes through a series of phases over time: the launch, growth, shake-out, maturity and decline (which can be mitigated with a lifecycle extension). For eCommerce retailers, there are many barriers to growth; these could be to do with the online customer journey, the discoverability of their digital real estate, or intensity of competition. Merchants might also have operational barriers to growth, such as with their product storage, order processing and inventory management. In this article, we discuss five ways a business can identify these barriers and overcome them.
- Conversion rate optimisation (CRO)
Optimising for eCommerce growth can be like a game of ‘wac-a-mole’; fix one thing and another problem can pop up, or a pre-existing problem can become more evident, or exacerbated. You might have made your business easier to find on search engines and marketplaces, but your website might be poorly-designed, difficult to navigate or not meet Google’s Core Web Vitals requirements. This can be remedied by utilising screen recording software such as Hotjar or Mouseflow, and surveying your website visitors. You might find points in the online customer journey where they are ‘rage clicking’ out of frustration. Your website might even have broken links, so customers could be reaching digital cul-de-sacs and abandoning their shopping experience to go elsewhere.
eCommerce CRO is the art of increasing the percentage of online shoppers who take a desired action. This could be micro conversions such as newsletter signups, entering a prize giveaway contest, or reaching out to your customer support team. CRO also deals with macro conversions such as adding a product to cart, purchasing a product, and when aiming to increase customer lifetime value (CLTV), repeat purchases. CRO can also be used to influence up-sell (product upgrades) and cross-sell (of relevant complementary products), either on the product page, at point of checkout, or when utilising an email marketing automation platform, even post-checkout.
- Organic search analysis
Utilising an SEO platform such as AHREFS can help merchants conduct in-depth keyword research to identify their target market’s search behaviour, such as the keywords they use, their intent, the search volumes, and difficulty to rank said keywords. Most online retailers don’t continually review search behaviour, so by utilising a paid platform such as AHREFS, or Google’s own Webmaster Tools, retailers can stay informed. Paid SEO intelligence platforms also allow merchants to monitor which search terms are generating the most traffic for their competitors also.
Ecommerce merchants can also increase their discoverability on search engines with Schema Markup, also known as ‘structured data’. This is special code that can be added to a website to inform Google to display content in a more interactive, ‘rich’ format. This could be product reviews, product ‘in stock’ status, delivery cost and timeframes.
- Paid marketing channels
While the return on investment of organically-generated demand can be enormous, eCommerce merchants don’t have a great deal of control. This is where paid channels can help. By advertising on search engines such as Google and Bing, along with PPC campaigns across Amazon and eBay, retailers can target specific product categories and locations. Platforms such as Spyfu help retailers monitor competitors’ PPC spend, keywords and ad targeting.
Scaling paid channels means identifying where ROI is positive. It involved effective audience segmentation, landing page optimisation, and minimising wastage such as adding negative keywords to Google and Bing Ads. Most customers won’t place an order until they have made multiple visits to your eCommerce store, which is why remarketing via multiple channels, such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can help drive repeat visits and also repeat purchases.
- Outsourcing fulfilment
Retailers will often reach a point where they get snowed under processing their own orders, in their own premises, and could consider working with a fulfilment centre who would manage the goods intake, storage, picking, packing, and distribution on their behalf. Provided they are shipping at least 10 orders per day on average, there are 3PL services geared towards high-growth start-ups, that can cater throughout each stage of the business lifecycle.
Finding the right fulfilment provider can help increase order accuracy, accelerate order processing, and when offering super-late order cut-off times, increased conversion rates. This is because many online shopping journeys are highly urgent, and shoppers expect next-day shipping. If it’s late in the evening, having a 3PL on hand to fulfil orders can help maximise sales.
Fulfilment centres often also partner with service providers, or offer additional services such as outsourced contact centre query management, proactive delivery management, customs clearance, outsourced manufacturing and product customisation. Some third-party logistics companies also offer inventory analysis technology, which informs entrepreneurs when to, and not to, order in new stock for replenishment, to avoid overstocking (which means capital tied up in inventory), and understocking (which means missed sales opportunities).
<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/OtnddpMJ_Uw?si=E-mJ4_Kj3YTLFMUV” title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen></iframe>
- Dropshipping
Dropshipping is when a vendor fulfils orders from a third-party supplier, who ships products directly to the customer. While some businesses purely dropship, and others only distribute their own products, many blend both approaches and utilise dropshipping suppliers to complement their own product range. Some retailers might have all of the other elements fixed, but a small product range; new product development can be hideously expensive, and dropshipping can be an excellent method of expanding one’s product range without having to invest in stock. While the profit margins typically aren’t as big as with sourcing and selling one’s own products, it is very scalable. Dropshipping can help retailers expand overseas, and minimise, if not eradicate, customs paperwork. With dropshipping, retailers don’t typically have to pay for storage costs, and only pay when an order occurs.
Implementing these tactics
After implementation comes measurement. By setting KPIs (key performance indicators), objectives and key results (OKRs) around organic and paid traffic, conversion rates, order processing speed, order accuracy and customer satisfaction, performance of these recommended strategies can be monitored in real-time, and on an ongoing basis.
