Thanks to extensive Covid-related lockdowns across the world, eCommerce has boomed in the last 12 months. 

As the market continues to expand, the online space for stores becomes even more saturated. Consumers can buy almost anything online, anywhere, at any time, from any device. People order, and it gets delivered straight to their door, no stress, no hassle. 

We’re not here to talk to you about how great online shopping is though, as we’re pretty sure you’re already aware. 

We’re here to show you how you can get your online shop to succeed in an ever-increasingly crowded online marketplace. 

Today we’re going to go through 6 key steps you can take to improve your eCommerce site’s marketing performance and successfully compete in the online world.

1. Know your eCommerce KPIs

Knowing your key performance indicators (KPIs) is essential when it comes to improving your online store. It’s what will drive your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly actions and help you make the choices you need to succeed. 

By monitoring your KPIs, you’ll be able to track your daily progress towards your goals. This will help you reach your sales and your marketing objectives a lot easier.

Depending on what your goals are will influence what KPIs are the most important to track. 

Some basic KPIs you can track include:

• New visitors 
• Time on site 
• New customers
• Returning customers
• Cart abandonment
• Average order value
• Website traffic
• Total number of orders
• Orders from email campaigns
• Orders from social traffic
• Orders from organic traffic

Setting SMART marketing objectives is essential here. Then you can track the corresponding KPI to achieve your goals.

2. Identify your target customers (and no, it’s not everyone)

Before you dive straight into a load of paid advertising, it’s a good idea to figure out who your ads should be targeted towards first. You can do this by creating customer personas. 

A customer persona is a document that holds all the critical characteristics of your target customer. It’s all the things that differentiate them from other people. 

You can filter your ads and campaigns to match these characteristics. 

This can include information like:

• Age
• Location
• Gender
• Occupation 
• Income level
• Favourite brands
• Buying habits

Customer personas are also a huge help when it comes to defining your overall brand messaging.

When you get to know your customers’ mindset more, you can tailor your content and your adverts to meet a more relevant audience. This will help you maximise your marketing success and get a better return on your investment.

3. Make browsing for mobile hassle-free

Although the balance of purchasing habits is still slightly skewed towards desktop or laptop, the conversion journey often starts with mobile. 

Mobile-first websites have been the industry standard for years now – if you’re not mobile-first, let alone mobile-friendly, you’re at a serious disadvantage. 

70% of all web traffic comes from mobile phones so if you’re not mobile-friendly you will lose a lot of business.

61% of people are more likely to work with a business that has a mobile-friendly site.

This means that your eCommerce store has to look perfect on all handheld devices. Mobile optimisation is by no means a new topic or idea, but you’ll be shocked to see how many brands tend to get this step wrong – or ignore it altogether. 

If your customers are faced with an awkward site to use, they’re only going to be frustrated and move on to a more user-friendly site.

Remember to periodically test your site on mobile so you can make sure it’s still giving customers a great browsing experience.

4. Create compelling content and engage on social media

Now it’s time to start achieving those KPIs you’ve set. 

First things first, your audience will only engage with your marketing if they see value in what you’re saying. 

Does your online content give them exciting insider info? Is there a discount or sale you’re offering they simply can’t ignore? Or perhaps you’ve dropped your latest must-have product? 

Whatever it is, the content you create promoting it has to be:

• Interesting
• Informative
• Insightful
• Engaging

This is the only way you’ll be able to get people to stop what they’re doing and take a look at what you have to say. Whether you get them to read your newsletter, check out your blog or interact with your social posts, it all helps to encourage them to buy your products later on. 

There are several factors you should consider when persuading users to check out your content.

These factors include: 

• Researching your audience – you’ve already done that with those customer personas above
• Understanding what content they’re interested in – check out what your competitors are posting (and what’s getting a lot of attention)
• Developing powerful content – you can get a content writer to help you here
• Analysing how your content is doing – and then change how you’re doing things to help improve views/interactions/conversions

Don’t forget to use your data as best as you can. Tailor your content specifically for your audience and nobody else. This will help you get more traction on your website, helping you achieve those KPIs.

5. Set up your email marketing automation triggers

Automation triggers are a great way to improve your marketing and make your company a more successful eCommerce store. 

Here are a few marketing automation triggers that you can build into your store. 

Abandoned cart recovery

The global abandoned cart rate is around 75.6% – which is massive! Think about how much more revenue you’d be able to make if you could even half your abandonment rate. 

The best way to salvage some of this revenue is to use an abandoned cart recovery email campaign. 

What this does is about an hour after they’ve abandoned their cart, a reminder is sent to their email. This reminds them that they still have to check out.  

If it doesn’t work the first time, you can also add a small incentive on the second or third reminder about a week after. For example, add a small discount code or free shipping with your email. 

Try not to send more than three emails – you don’t want to annoy them and scare them away. 

Upsells

Product recommendations are a powerful and engaging content strategy. 

When your customer has submitted their order for review, offer them some super-relevant products unique to them. 

This will encourage your customer to add something else into their basket, which will increase the average order value helping you reach your KPIs.

Win-back

If a customer hasn’t purchased anything from you in a while, then you might be at risk of losing them. This might be a customer who purchased once or a customer who used to be a regular. 

Whichever it was, retaining customers is vital for any eCommerce business. It’s a lot cheaper to retain a customer than to get a new one, so send them an email asking them why it’s been so long. 

Ask them if there’s anything you can do and maybe offer them free shipping on their next order. You must emphasise how much you missed them and that you value them as a customer.

6. Reward customers for their loyalty

Loyalty goes a long way in the world of eCommerce, which is why it’s essential to appreciate every single one of your customers. 

From when your customer places that first order to when they’ve put in their tenth, you should always thank them for their purchase in a more personal way – make them feel valued as a customer. 

You can also create a loyalty program that customers can enrol in. This is often seen in coffee shops where your tenth coffee or so is free. 

Maybe you can build a point system where your customers earn points by how much they spend. They can then use these points for discounts and free shipping. 75% of consumers favour companies that offer rewards so consider adding a reward system to your business.

By rewarding your customers for being with you, you’ll be able to retain them for longer. You’ll also be able to show future customers that your company is a professional company to buy from. 

If you need help improving your eCommerce marketing then get in contact with us today and our friendly team of expert eCommerce marketers will be there to help. 

As a leading premier digital agency based in Ireland, our work will drive sales to your business. 

Let us know if you need any help optimising your online sales and marketing strategies.