If you have an eCommerce store, you are likely always looking for new ways to boost sales and grow your business.
The truth is that online retail space is more competitive than ever. And so implementing optimization strategies is a must if you want to give your store an edge.
In 2024, there are many effective ways to optimize different parts of your eCommerce operations to improve the overall user experience and increase conversions. But here are the ecommerce growth hacks that will be particularly impactful.
Optimize for Mobile Devices
One of the best ways to boost your eCommerce sales in 2024 is to optimize your online store for mobile devices. Today, most online shopping happens on phones or tablets instead of desktop computers. And so if your eCommerce site is not mobile-friendly with a seamless checkout process, you are missing out on sales.
You want to ensure your product pages display properly on mobile screens. The images, descriptions, review, and payment options should be easy for customers to see and interact with on their phones or tablets. Check to make sure content is not cut off, text is readable without zooming, and the checkout process flows smoothly.
Too often, eCommerce sites look fine on laptop screens but have a terrible mobile user experience. Avoid this issue by testing your online store on actual mobile devices. Identify pain points in navigation or checkout and improve the mobile shopping journey. This eCommerce growth hack will pay off all year long as more purchases shift to smartphones.
Boost User-Generated Content
User-generated content like customer photos and product reviews have become extremely influential in eCommerce. In fact, over 70% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase. All it takes is a few positive customer testimonials or beautiful user images to drive conversions for an online product listing.
Focus on making it easy for customers to leave ratings and write product reviews after they buy from your store. Email them follow-up surveys that get published publicly or enable quick one-click ratings. The more quality user-generated content you can display alongside products, the greater the social proof.
Similarly, run contests where shoppers submit images featuring your products. Then share the photos on product pages or in marketing. This improves conversion rates by showing real customers enjoying what they bought.
Lean on loyal buyers to organically promote your offerings to potential customers.
Optimize for Relevant Keywords
While social content and mobile optimization are hugely important, you cannot neglect keyword optimization in eCommerce. At the end of the day, most online shopping journeys start from search engines like Google. If your products do not show up for key consumer searches, you miss out on traffic.
Ensure you do keyword research to identify high-value terms and phrases related to your eCommerce offerings. As you create product titles, descriptions, alt text and site content, deliberately use these keywords. Also include synonyms and naturally conversational mentions of the words. This comprehensive optimization helps search engines fully grasp your pages’ topics.
The goal is to rank well so when consumers search questions like “where to buy stylish clogs” your eCommerce site appears on the first page. Appearing on search engines for a wide range of customer queries will lead to exponential growth. SEO may take time, but it generates sustainable traffic from new shoppers as long as you strategically target keywords.
Streamline the Checkout Process
If someone adds items to their online cart but abandons the purchase before checkout, you miss out on revenue. Sadly, this shopping cart abandonment happens frequently even with great products. Complicated checkout flows lead to carts being left before payment.
That’s why simplifying your eCommerce site’s buying process is a must. Ensure shoppers do not have to create user accounts or go through extensive payment confirmation steps. Reduce field inputs to the essentials and use familiar, user-friendly payment gateways.
Test your checkout process to catch any sticking points. See if you can buy something without signing up for an account in under two minutes. And also, pay close attention to mobile checkout since purchases increasingly happen on small screens with short attention spans.
In short, implementing a few quick eCommerce conversion optimization strategies can significantly boost purchase completion.
Use Exit-intent Popups
As visitors browse your online store, there is a decent chance they leave without adding anything to their cart. This commonly happens when the products themselves are not the issue, but the customers just are not ready to buy in that session. Exit-intent popups help capture those site visitors before they move on from your eCommerce site.
The popups get triggered when the visitor’s mouse goes to close their browser tab. It then presents a targeted offer like a discount code or free gift. This gives the customer an extra incentive to stick around and complete their purchase or at least bookmark your site for later.
Timing is everything with exit-intent campaigns. The custom trigger event catches readers at a critical point when you only have one last chance for a conversion. Keep the popup message extremely short and sweet tied to a compelling offer. Use exit popups appropriately without overdoing their frequency to maximize results.
Encourage Product Reviews
Product reviews and ratings provide social validation that builds buyer trust in unfamiliar eCommerce businesses. Yet many customers do not think to leave reviews without some friendly reminders.
Luckily, prompting for ratings is an easy eCommerce growth hack with a big payoff in driving future sales.
After someone purchases from you, follow up with an email asking them to rate and review items they bought. List specific products in the message and link directly to the review tab on your site for effortless submissions. To encourage thoughtful responses, you could even offer a future discount like 10% off their next order for posting a review.
Not everyone will take the time to submit, but those who do give future buyers more confidence. Display shining reviews proudly at the top of product pages. The positive word-of-mouth shines on new visitor impressions and tips conversion scales. Gathering ratings and reviews taps into customer experiences to boost conversions long term.
Craft Detailed Product Descriptions
When shopping online, customers rely heavily on product page details to determine what they are buying. So well-written descriptions, specs, images, and videos can make or break eCommerce conversion rates. Despite this, many online businesses still stick with mediocre or auto-generated item explanations.
Take the time to craft thoughtful product copy and descriptions. Go beyond bullet points to narratively explain important product qualities and how they benefit real life usage. Help the reader visualize and emotionally connect how an item fits their wants and needs.
Share sufficient technical specifications without getting overly complicated. No one wants to read a dense manual just to buy something online. Also include supplemental images, diagrams, and videos to showcase products visually from different angles. The better your eCommerce content quality, the better chance of customers adding items to their cart.
Promote Abandoned Carts
Pushing past visitors to complete their online checkout is a go-to eCommerce conversion tactic. But retargeting recently bounced site traffic takes this growth hack up another level for extra sales lift. Used lightly to avoid annoyance, abandoned cart promotions remind customers what they left behind.
Once someone exits your online store without finishing checkout, tag them for retargeting. Then create ads, emails, or exit popups reminding them of what lingered in their cart. For example, “Thinking of buying those blue sneakers? They are still waiting in your cart!” Add incentive urgency with a discount or impending product shortages.
Time messages appropriately in frequency and span to spark renewed purchase desire. Being overly aggressive may backfire. Find the right abandoned cart nurturing balance to play on buyer psychology and tempt second attempts. With thousands of dollars left on table by cart abandonment, retargeting those customers smartly leads to more closed eCommerce sales.
Incentivize Social Sharing
Shoppers trust recommendations from people they know far more than generic product advertising. That means that customer social sharing is extremely valuable for eCommerce conversion growth. The challenge is only a tiny fraction of buyers actively promote your brand after purchase unless you encourage it.
To overcome this challenge, run structured incentives that prompt social sharing focused on the product itself rather than broad store likes. Promote reviews, ratings, tweeting thoughts, posting photos with the item and more. And also gamify referral programs through easy automated tracking and rewards for both referrers and referees on eventual purchase.
People want to share their new favorite products but often just do not remember or bother. As a result, small perks can make social word-of-mouth more top of mind, and it can at the same time add some fun to the experience.
In summary, setting up structured incentives and systems will pay dividends because it will allow you to automatically deploy thousands of micro-advocates on your brand’s behalf who are motivated to magnify your marketing reach exponentially.
Personalize Website Experience
Connecting with customers individually scales much better than one generic eCommerce experience. Essentially, the same site content shown to every user will not convert as well as personalized messaging that matches specific interests. And so make your online store feel more tailored by serving up dynamic product suggestions, custom calls to action and individually targeted promotions through website personalization.
Segment visitors based on past behaviors, purchase history, browsing trails and any info provided to your store. Use data combinations to define audience micro-groups. Then serve each target market appropriate eCommerce site layouts and content geared specifically for them. Show motorcycle enthusiasts deals on biker products. Remind repeat art supply buyers they left items unpurchased in previous sessions. The more relevance your store has to each website visitor, the better chance of conversions.
Personalization works thanks to marketing technology dynamically changing page elements in real time. Therefore, set rules to map custom experiences to customer groups that get served automatically. With this automated solution, the elements adapt as segmentation data evolves. And in so doing, it keeps your eCommerce site feeling fresh and tailored to every individual shopper at scale.
Integrate Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs encourage repeat eCommerce purchases through member-exclusive perks.
You can create a points-based system to reward spending milestones with discounts or free products. You can also adopt tier structures like gold/platinum status that allow your highest-value shoppers to unlock VIP benefits. However you model it, loyalty builds lasting customer relationships that sustain long-term business growth.
To level up the experience, you can sweeten the value proposition by letting members earn points for social sharing, ratings and reviews too. This further incentivizes purchase-driving behaviors beyond just spending more. Sometimes, even simple perks like free shipping or birthday coupons are enough motivation.
And so establish your loyalty program early rather than later to start cumulative member histories that will then translate into predictable revenue streams for your website. Ultimately the combination of financial incentives and recognized VIP status will compel consistent repeat purchases from committed brand fans.
Follow Trends in Your Niche
One of the most straightforward eCommerce growth hacks is researching the latest popular offerings in your product niche. Then make what is trending available in your online store while consumer demand is high. Doing this will allow you to simply ride the waves of hot trends before they fade away.
And so scour industry news sites, social platforms and competitor stores for arising fads. Run Google Trends reports and look for fast-rising queries. And then ask customers what exciting new items they want to see.
Jumping on trends while they are still fresh better positions your eCommerce shop as an innovative industry leader. And through these trends, you can elevate beyond competitors that are stuck selling last season’s stale catalog.
Just don’t go overboard. Chasing every tiny fad can cause you to accumulate obsolete inventory.
Display Trust Symbols on Product Pages
First-time visitors to your eCommerce site may be rightly skeptical about making purchases from an unfamiliar store. Unfortunately, scam reports and data breaches have continuously undermined consumer trust in online shopping. And so to overcome this hurdle, reassure your customers and ease their buying fears by prominently showcasing trust symbols across your store’s product pages.
Display security seals from providers like Norton or TRUSTe confirming your site safely encrypts data. Highlight links to verified Facebook pages and polished Better Business Bureau profiles that document countless positive reviews from past buyers. And make policies easily accessible – things like guarantees, return processes and transparency reports on how you handle data internally.
Generally, the more visibility into your legit operations you offer, the more comfortable visitors will feel entering payment credentials. The reassurance symbols that you display will help to kick-start the relationships with your potential customers and can be critical in generating initial sales.
Lean On Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing leverages endorsement of your products or brand from relevant social media personalities. It taps into their trusted dynamic fanbases. And so select partners that resonate with your target consumers to drive awareness and eCommerce traffic through sponsored content promotions.
Research vertical-specific bloggers, journalists, photographers, videographers or industry experts who have engaged niche audiences. And don’t shy away from micro-influencers in specific interest segments.
Leverage their authentic voices and original imagery. And use them to expand your reach beyond traditional ads.